


Iyrin's Daughter

by Siavahda



Series: Children of the Iyrin [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angels, BDSM, Demons, Dom/sub, F/F, F/M, LGBTQ Characters of Color, M/M, Matriarchal demon hunters, Multi, Mythological Retellings, Parkour, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zara  really <i>isn't</i> like other girls: she's never met her mother, she can smell what you had for dinner last night, and the presence of other women makes her see red. Then there's her dad, Nasir, who cares more about her Parkour and her Krav Maga than her GPA, and her boyfriend Caleb, who's also her submissive. Not exactly traditional relationships for a seventeen year old girl.</p><p>She thinks her life is strange now. But then she starts growing wings, her dad gets kidnapped, and some extremely strange strangers keep insisting she's descended from angels. And if she wants to get her dad back, she's going to need their help.</p><p>Damn it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as a TMI fanfiction, but by the end of chapter one it was pretty obvious the only thing it had in common with the canon was the character names. So now we're going to see how well it stands as original fic. Let me know what you think!
> 
> (And give me the benefit of the doubt on the Nephilim thing. I promise you they're not like Cassandra Clare's!)
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

It’s like this:

Caleb is Zara’s. To the bone, incontrovertibly and irrevocably _hers._

It’s something they’ve both known since they were five years old, when Zara chased off Mary Jane from down the street by planting a handprint in blue paint on Caleb’s cheek and fiercely declaring, _“Mine.”_ Between the low growl and the patented Shammas glare, MJ stalked off in a huff, and Zara’s smug smile lasted the whole week.

Caleb, of course, accepted the claim without question. Even when they were nine and Zara gave Gary Dowers a black eye because he’d tried to steal Caleb’s lunch money, Caleb just sat back and let Zara handle it. The pattern was already well-established by then.

Neither of them noticed Zara’s dad and Tariq exchange the occasional worried glance over Zara’s protectiveness—or connected those looks to Nasir’s decision to pull Zara out of school a few months after the lunch money incident.

Since he convinced Mrs Reines to home-school Caleb, too, what did Zara and Caleb care? 

By the time they were fourteen it had evolved into outright territoriality, with Zara circling Caleb like a stallion around a mare, driving off any potential competition. Boys were all right—Zara graciously allowed Will, then sporting a neatly trimmed afro, into Caleb’s reach, and later Scott and Javier, who were a package deal; the one a quiet white boy with a surprisingly wry tongue, and the other a gamer of Mediterranean descent who bonded with Caleb over World of Warcraft. She knifed each of them with a single piercing, all-seeing stare, before finally nodding regal acceptance: yes, they were good enough to be friends with her Caleb. But girls? Any and all girls who approached Caleb were summarily driven off without mercy. Frosty rudeness, wicked pranks, and when necessary physical violence sufficed to make sure that the female population of the neighbourhood received the message loud and clear: leave Caleb Reines alone, because Zara didn’t share.

After a particularly vicious catfight, Nasir sat his daughter down for a Talk—and got precisely nowhere.

“Caleb’s happy, isn’t he?” Zara demanded. “He’s healthy, he gets good grades—who says anything’s wrong?”

She bristled at the suggestion that she wasn’t taking good care of her Caleb—because of course _she_ was the one who had made him stop buying Mars bars and eat apples instead, and _she_ was the one who made sure his homework got done when he and the other boys wanted to play video games, and Nasir put his head in his hands and groaned.

“Zara, you can’t keep Caleb from making friends…” He tried. But his own voice was uncertain, and Zara huffed, not convinced in the least.

“He _has_ friends,” she pointed out. Which was true. There was Will and Scott and Javier, who were stupid boys but a little less stupid than most, since they liked Caleb and that was a sign of good taste, as far as Zara was concerned. They weren’t _hers_ , not like Caleb was, but they were acceptable.

“But no girlfriends—friends-who-are-girls,” Nasir clarified hurriedly when Zara’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t he hang out with girls, too, if he wants?”

And Zara said simply, “No.”

And that was that.

*

When they’re sixteen, Caleb comes out as bi by admitting that he likes Spike the same way he likes Buffy.

It makes Zara pause, and consider. “I don’t think I’m like that,” she says finally. She feels vaguely annoyed, as if Caleb’s managed to one-up her.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “What about Storm?”

“Well, yeah, for _Storm_ I’d turn bi in a white-hot second,” Zara says, because _obviously_ , does he even have to ask? “But I don’t think I like most girls.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he says dryly, and she grins at him, unrepentant.

She kisses him a week later. They’re in her room and they both taste of ice-cream, because it’s summer and too hot to do _anything_ but eat ice-cream, but Caleb’s lips are cool and perfect, and they part under hers when she runs the tip of her tongue over them. The way he shudders against her makes something hot and molten coil in the pit of her stomach, makes her fingers curl tightly in the fabric of his shirt.

His mouth is sweet like cookie-dough.

*

After that first kiss, they learn fast that Zara doesn’t like what the girls in the romance movies like. Caleb tries, clumsily and uncertainly, to take charge, the way the whole world says he’s supposed to, and Zara tries to let him, but it just doesn’t work; it leaves her body numb and her mind starts drifting to her Chemistry homework when Caleb’s trying to be macho or whatever.

She can tell he doesn’t like it either. Not the way he likes her hands in his hair, bending his head back so she can suck at his throat. He never whimpers like he does when she pins his wrists to the mattress and kisses him slowly, like torture, lapping at his mouth until his lips are wet and swollen and he can hardly breathe. When he tries to give her a love-bite, the small, sharp pain makes her want to swat him; whereas he gets hard when she has her teeth in his neck.

They give it up after a couple of weeks and just do what feels good instead.

Sometimes it makes Zara wonder what’s wrong with her, that she wants this. Wants it _like_ this. She knows other girls like their boyfriends to be just a little bit possessive, to carry their bags and kiss them with their backs against a wall, but it just doesn’t work for her. Other girls fantasise about their boyfriends getting down on their knees to propose; Zara imagines the look in his eyes if, while he was down there, she pulled his face between her legs and ordered him to use his tongue.

No one in the books or comics she and Caleb read or in the movies they watch wants what she does. But Caleb likes it, so what does it matter if she’s the one on top? Who cares?

She wears a skirt without panties, and puts him on his knees, and watches his face as she spreads her legs.

*

Her plan is to have sex-sex—penis-in-vagina, hetero-normative, God-approved sex—on her seventeenth birthday. There’s no real reason for it—by the time they both feel ready to go all the way, it’s just a few weeks until the big day and they might as well wait a little longer. It can be her birthday present.

His fingers and mouth are pretty epic consolation for waiting, anyway.

But then Vatican happens, and pandemonium breaks loose.

Because she looks at Davi and thinks, _mine._


	2. Chapter One - Awaken to the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Subject to changes, because this is ENTIRELY UN-BETAED and I literally finished this about three minutes ago XD Hope you guys like!

Had anyone glanced up at just that moment, they would have seen the quick, darting forms of two flying shadows soaring from one rooftop to the next.

Zara dropped onto the lower roof and fell seamlessly into a perfect roll, springing up to her feet again before Caleb had even landed. She heard him hit the tiles behind her but didn’t stop to watch; she sprung ahead with a two-handed vault over a chimney stack, her legs scissoring wide and then snapping together as she landed at a run. The wind tugged at her ponytail, and she could feel Caleb catch up to her, his long legs eating up the distance until they were side-by-side again, the way they were meant to be, as synchronised as heartbeats.

The roof ended and they flew again, taking off hard with practised leaps. Zara tucked her legs in under her as Caleb front-flipped forward, showing off; he turned head-over-heels twice and landed on his feet on the other side, only just touching down before dissolving into a perfect Parkour roll to absorb the impact, right shoulder to left hip and snapping upright again. Zara’s palms touched down first, slapping against the concrete; she pushed off from it and front-flipped, twisting mid-air and landing lightly on the soles of her sneakers, cat-like, elastic.

Ahead of her, Caleb kicked off the ground and up into the air, corkscrewing his body parallel with the ground as he passed over a low wall, arms by his sides. With a laugh, Zara precision-jumped, springing with both legs together and landing on top of the wall. She used the momentum to keep going, immediately leaping again down onto the level and running after her boyfriend. He was a few yards in the lead now, pulling a wall pass; he ran vertically up the next wall, snatching at the top of it to haul himself over and out of her sight, smooth as Spiderman.

_I don’t think so!_

Her sneakers slapped against the ground as she pushed off, launching herself upwards after him as if she were winged. Her fingers found the ledge and she turned it into a forward roll, unfolding cat-like to her feet. Caleb was already halfway across the level by then, gearing up to drop back down.

He never saw her coming.

She tackled him, hard; his breath _whooshed_ from his chest as they hit the concrete together, tumbling over and under each other in a blurring whirl of thrilling gravity. She heard him laugh right before she caught his shoulders and shoved them down, pinning him flat against the ground.

Caleb melted; the moment she pushed he turned boneless, unresisting, and it sent bright heat searing down Zara’s spine, feeling him give himself up to her without hesitation. A purr caught in her throat, and she watched his pupils grow swollen as she stroked her hands down his arms, skimming her nails lightly over his tawny skin until he shivered.

“Zara…”

“Mm?” She closed her hands around his wrists, firmly, and smirked at the soft, helpless sound he made.

“Please kiss me,” he pleaded, and she purred outright, leaning forward to bring her mouth over his.

“Begging already,” she breathed, smug. “Are you all wound up, Caleb?” She kissed the corner of his lips, lightly, softly. Revelling in the needy whimper that spilled out of his throat. “Thinking about tonight?”

He groaned softly, tipping his head back helplessly. She didn’t need him to answer—straddling his hips, she could feel his growing hardness—but she wanted to hear him say it. Wanted to know he was thinking about it, unable to get it out of his mind.

She rolled her hips against his, gently grinding his arousal against her ache. Briefly letting go of his wrists, she pulled the hairband from her ponytail, shaking her black hair so that it tumbled down around her shoulders.

“Yes!” Caleb gasped, “Yes, of course I am—I haven’t thought about anything else for _days_ —”

“What a coincidence,” Zara murmured. “Neither have I.” Abruptly she caught and pushed his hands above his head, holding them there; the effort arched her body over his, curving her spine, and she nuzzled his jaw, dragging her teeth over the bone. Her hair fell around them like a curtain, mingling with his own dark chocolate tresses, and Caleb groaned as it brushed his cheek.

“Oh God,” he whispered, biting his lip.

She purred and nipped his neck, trailing her lips down to his pulse. The _scent_ of him—it drove her unutterably insane, a perfume that demanded she seek its source, kiss and bite and taste it, _mark_ it. She’d long since found the exact spot on his throat that emanated the maddening, delicious aroma, the curve where his neck met his shoulder, and it was a rare day when that particular inch of skin wasn’t mottled blue and violet from her teeth. It called to her, again and again, with that scent that grew stronger the faster Caleb’s heart pounded; like woodsmoke and fresh-cut grass and baking cookies, vanilla and coconut and autumn leaves, and nothing like any of them. Nothing got her hotter faster than breathing it in.

No one else smelled like Caleb. Every other guy she’d ever met smelled like plastic and sweat and whatever they’d had for lunch—but beneath that there was nothing; they had no scent of their own, as if they weren’t real. Her dad and Tariq and Caleb were the only ones who smelled real—and of them, only Caleb drew her in like this.

She licked his scent-spot, and felt him swallow hard. “Have you been imagining it, Caleb?” She rolled her hips harder over him, grinding his arousal right where she wanted it—and he _whined_ , pushing up into her desperately because he could feel it, couldn’t he, the slick heat of her spread open right over his cock, only their thin sweats keeping skin from skin— “What it’ll feel like when I sink down onto you, take you into me?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

She leaned up and kissed him hard in reward. His lips opened under hers, welcoming her in eagerly, his tongue pleading for hers. She slid into him, stroking his mouth until he was trembling under her, every muscle taut with the need to touch her.

That he couldn’t—because she held him down, because he let her—set her blood on fire.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be looking forward to it,” she murmured against his mouth. Deliberately squirming over his hips—he moaned, the sound almost one of pain—she adjusted her grip on his wrists so she was holding him down one-handed. “I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to let you touch me.” She slid her freed hand down his chest, thumbing his nipple through his thin workout shirt. “Imagine _that_ for me, pet: your hands tied behind your back while I ride you. Having to watch me, feel me, but unable to touch me as I use you…”

He moaned, straining against her hold—but not hard enough to break free; only enough to feel the pressure of her holding him down. “You’d kill me,” he gasped, breathing so fast, so hard, that maddening _scent_ spilling from his throat. “Oh God, I couldn’t take it—I’d go _insane_ —”

Zara paused, pretending to consider. “You’re right,” she decided. And smirked, nipping Caleb’s lower lip gently. “I should blindfold you too.”

Caleb _whimpered_ , a sweetness that jolted straight down between Zara’s legs and smouldered there, molten and wet.

“You can picture it, can’t you?” she breathed, brushing her lips over his ear. Her fingertips stroked a line over his hipbones—and slid under the waistband of her sweats.

He jerked, panting, shivering, his pupils blown. “Are you—?”

“Mmhm.”

His head fell back. _“Fuck.”_

“Picture it, Caleb,” she murmured, and he whimpered again as she stroked herself, the fabric of their trousers so thin her knuckles pressed and rolled against his cock with every minute movement. “If you couldn’t touch me, couldn’t see me—if all you could do was feel me take you, bit by bit until I had all of you in me…” She was so wet; she shifted a little, pressing the bulk of his arousal against the throbbing ache, torturing herself as well as him. She ground against it, panting herself now, her fingers moving faster over her clit as she pictured it. She could almost feel what it would be like—the desperate, needy sounds Caleb would make, not so different from the ones he was making now, but with the added pleasure of _finally_ fucking him, finally filling that hungry warm ache— “Feeling me start to ride you, so slowly—using you, and you’d feel so good in me, Caleb, make me feel so good—”

She kissed his cheek. “You want to make me feel good, don’t you?” she breathed, rocking against him.

“Yes,” he gasped, “God, yes, Zara, _Zara_ —” He was almost, almost sobbing, breathless and incredible and _hers_ , hers to the bone. “Anything, anything you want—”

“Good boy,” she moaned, panting, nuzzling his jaw, “such a good boy, Caleb—so good, all mine—”

She fell against his mouth as she came, kissing him hard and messy, tasting his frantic need as she rocked, shuddering with the diamond-lightning flash of her orgasm. She let go of his wrists and his arms came up around her, holding her, stroking her through it and he was kissing her, kissing and kissing her, her good boy, her Caleb.

“I love you,” she sighed as the aftershocks rippled through her. She snuggled into his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin. “Gods, I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too,” he whispered. She felt him kiss her hair. He was still breathing hard, his cock a delicious hardness against her lower belly. “More than anything.”

Lazily, Zara nuzzled his scent-spot. Licked it. He shuddered. “Do you want to come?” she murmured.

He trembled against her. “Yes,” he whispered.

She shifted against him, raising herself up. With a single fingertip, she tipped his face up to hers. “Then beg me for it,” she breathed against his lips.

He did.

*

When they had both recovered, they made their way back to the Shammas residence over the rooftops, taking it easier than they had on the outward journey. There was no need to push muscles still a little soft and rubbery from the afterglow.

Nasir was standing in Zara’s room when she swung down through the window, staring at his watch. “What time do you call this?”

Zara landed in a crouch and rolled out of the way, making room for Caleb to swing in after her. “It’s not nine yet,” she protested.

Caleb straightened up beside her. “Hi Mr Shammas,” he said shyly.

Nasir rolled his eyes—Caleb’s refusal to use Nasir’s first name was a long-running argument. “Good morning, Caleb.” He returned his attention to Zara. “That route is supposed to take you thirty minutes. You’ve been gone over an hour. If you’re slacking—”

Zara raised one eyebrow. “Dad, no.”

He stopped mid-rant. “Excuse me?”

“We weren’t slacking.” She grinned. “We just stopped for…bagels.”

“Bagels?”

Zara nodded mock-solemnly. “Yes. Bagels.”

Nasir glanced from his daughter’s innocence to Caleb’s blush. “I’m sure,” he said dryly. “I hope you used protection for your bagels, at least.”

Caleb’s flush worsened.

“Yep,” Zara said cheerfully. “We had napkins and everything.”

Caleb looked as if he were in danger of choking.

Nasir sighed and waved his hand, dismissing them. “Fine, fine. But tomorrow, stick to your time, okay? I don’t want you getting soft.”

Zara touched two fingers to her temple and saluted him. “Sir, yes sir!”

Her father rolled his eyes again and headed for the door. “Both of you get cleaned up and ready for Trig,” he said over his shoulder.

“Trig on my birthday?” Zara demanded. “That’s just cruel and unusual punishment!”

“And separate showers!” Nasir called. “You can use mine, Reines!”

Zara grinned and pecked her boyfriend on the lips. “You heard the man, dear,” she said. “Get to it.”

She didn’t have to look to know that he watched her leave. The play on the rooftop had taken the edge off, but they were both hungry for tonight.

*

“Morning, kiddo,” Tariq said when Zara emerged from her bedroom. “You want coffee?”

“When in my life have I ever turned down caffeine?” she asked the ceiling, dropping down into her usual chair. Caleb already had his books open, frowning adorably as his pencil moved over the page, muttering to himself under his breath.

“You’re seventeen now; who knows what strange thing you’ll try next?” Tariq set her mug down beside her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

“Thanks.” She kissed his scruffy cheek, inhaling his familiar scent. “Shouldn’t you be at the store by now, though?”

Tariq glanced over at Nasir, grinning. “I would have been, but somebody kept me up late last night.”

Nasir ducked his head, blushing almost as badly as Caleb would have done. It never stopped being hilarious that her father, who was stoic on every other topic, grew so flustered about sex.

“Don’t complain—if he were gone your dad would have to make breakfast,” Caleb said without looking up. He ducked Nasir’s playful swipe without needing to see it.

“Ungrateful wretches,” Nasir declared, heading for the coffee machine. “I wash my hands of all of you.”

Laughing, Tariq darted over and caught Nasir by the waist, spinning them back-to-chest. “Not all of us, I hope,” he teased in a low murmur, dropping a kiss on his lover’s neck.

Nasir muttered something Zara couldn’t hear, his dark skin helping to hide his blush. Zara grinned, dropping her eyes to give them a modicum of privacy.

She couldn’t remember a time her father’s petrichor-cedarwood-bamboo scent hadn’t carried traces of Tariq’s old books-steel-coffee smell, and vice versa. For as long as she had memory Tariq had been her second father, there on her first day of school (and her last), there to take her to the zoo and the library and put band-aids on her scrapes. She had thought that everyone’s second parent went away at bedtime after reading the night’s story, and came back the next day to cook breakfast.

She hadn’t understood that Tariq wasn’t actually related to her until Nasir explained, but even a seven year old couldn’t miss what her dad and Tariq meant to each other. She’d known _that_ long before Nasir extended his boyfriend a permanent invitation to stay the night.

 _‘I’m seven, not stupid!’_ she’d announced at the time, to Nasir’s bemusement and Tariq’s laughter.

She still wasn’t stupid, could still see that they fit perfectly together. Her dad had a swimmer’s build, his muscles toned without mass, lithe and slender, with terra-cotta skin and the most incredible hair, black as night and fine as silk, that he kept forgetting to cut. Tariq was more muscular, taller, his skin a few shades lighter and his dark hair cut shorter than Nasir’s, his jaw stubbled where Nasir was always smooth-shaven, and on the bad days—the days when Zara’s father had white knuckles and white lips and dark eyes, his shoulders hard and tense as wood—Tariq was the only one who could make him laugh again.

But today wasn’t one of the bad days. Today there were pancakes, and her dads kissing over coffee, and annoying Trigonometry. There was Caleb’s bare foot pressed against hers, and the shadow of her teeth just visible over the neck of his shirt, and the warm, fizzing anticipation of the coming night. How was she supposed to focus on her exercises when all she could think about was what Caleb would look like, sound like, feel like when they finally went all the way?

Tariq left to tend to his music store, promising to be back for the birthday celebrations. Nasir sat down at the table with Zara and Caleb, helping them when they needed or asked for it, wandering into the spare room that had become the studio when they didn’t.

Time crawled until noon, when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Zara sang, springing up from her chair all too eagerly—only for Nasir to point her back down in her seat.

“Finish your exercise,” he ordered, walking towards the door himself. But he smiled as he touched the doorknob. “Get all the answers, and it can be the last for today.”

“Do we have to get answers, or the _right_ answers?” Caleb asked.

“Don’t be smart, Reines,” Nasir tossed over his shoulder.

“But I thought that was the point?”

Bent over her book, Zara knew who had arrived by the scent that came breezing into the apartment with the sound of the opening door. Caleb’s mom was confusing, caught in the middle of the Venn diagram that existed in Zara’s head, dividing ‘the world’ from ‘family’; her scent was mostly blank, the same disturbing nothingness that was the default odour of the greater populace, but there was a flicker of _more_ in it. Beneath the synthetic, not-real smell there was a whisper of jasmine tea and citrus, so faint that Zara couldn’t always pick up on it at all. It grew stronger when Mrs Reines was emotional, but that was a bad thing, because the clearer the scent became, the more it rubbed Zara the wrong way, grating across her senses like heated sandpaper until she wanted to break something. And that sucked, because Caleb’s mom was awesome.

Now, for example, she came bearing cake.

“And my famous kosher bagels,” Mrs Reines declared, sweeping in to set the various baked goods on the kitchen counter—whereupon she gave Nasir and Caleb a bemused glance. “Why is she laughing?”

Neither Zara’s dad nor her boyfriend wanted to explain why she’d dissolved into giggles at the sight of the bagels, so Zara got herself under control in time to thank Mrs Reines for her efforts and birthday wishes.

The cake was excellent, which surprised precisely no one. Tariq returned in time for the moist, chocolatey goodness, and if Zara licked her fingers a bit more than necessary, the look on Caleb’s face as he watched her lips was more than worth it.

Then it was time for presents: Mrs Reines presented her with a giftcard to Hot Topic and a translated copy of the _Karma Sutra_ (Nasir’s cheeks flushed dark again), and the wrapping paper on Tariq’s gift gave way to reveal a beautiful leather-bound journal, its creamy pages alternately blank for drawings and lined for music.

The box from Caleb was small enough to fit in her cupped hands.

“It’s made from a New York quarter,” he said when she saw the ring. “See? And it’s from the year you were born.” He showed her: _New York 1998_ was emblazoned on the bronze metal, clear as day.

Zara could feel her smile stretching across her face, impossible to hold in. “Put it on me?” She held out her hand to him, draping it across his fingers like a Queen awaiting her consort’s kiss.

She smelled the spice of simmering desire rise from his body as he obediently slid the ring onto her middle finger, careful not to catch her skin.

She withdrew her hand and splayed her fingers, admiring it. Loving it, the small perfection of it, eccentric and sweet and wonderful. “Caleb, it’s _gorgeous_. Thank you!” Heedless of their audience, she flung her arms around him, squeezing tight. “I love it!”

He hugged her back. “You’re so welcome.”

“All right, lovebirds, it’s my turn.” Nasir pushed the final present towards Zara. “This is for you.”

“Is anybody else getting presents today?” Zara joked, loosening her arms from around Caleb. “What is it?”

“Open it up, and you’ll see.”

The dark blue wrapping paper tore easily. Underneath it was a flat box of very dark wood, a little bigger than her hand with fingers outspread. It smelled _amazing_ , spicy and rich, and Zara breathed it in before she noticed the elaborate carvings: every inch of the box was engraved with strange symbols like nothing she’d ever seen before. For a moment they felt familiar, but that was impossible; she would have remembered an alphabet this elegantly weird, with its elegant curlicues and hard, sharp angles…

She traced her fingertip over one, a diamond with two little horns curving from the top of it. The simple little design was so hypnotic, tugging at her; drawing it over and over again with her finger, it felt as though she were falling into it, as if the rest of the world were dissolving into silk and shadows—and in the space left behind, she thought she could hear someone singing…

“Zara?” Tariq asked. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

The music vanished. The world came back, and Zara blinked, startled. “Right. Sorry, it’s just such a pretty box.”

She lifted the lid—and gasped.

She’d thought the box was intricate, but it had nothing on the necklace inside. Resting on a bed of white velvet was a round pendant of silvery crystal, formed of two circles. The main, inner circle had an emblem of an upside-down star with what looked like a 3 and a 6 on either side of it, with a triangle above and a kind of trident below. The outer circle, like a rim around the first, flowed with swirling, curving symbols. Only the small crescent moon at the top made any sense to her.

The design wasn’t engraved, but cut out of the gem as if it had been drawn with a stencil, each symbol touching the next to form a delicate lacework of crystal. It made for a more elegant effect than if it had been a solid amulet simply carved with all the little pictograms; the result was ephemeral and feminine and strong. Shining like solid starlight, it might have been the talisman of a witch or a goddess.

“Woah,” Caleb said, leaning over to have a look. “What is it?”

Carefully, Zara lifted it free of the box, touching it only with her fingertips and only at the edges, as if it was a developing photograph that might smudge. A thin gold chain spilled out between her fingers. “Dad…”

“It belonged to your mother,” Nasir said, and Zara’s head snapped up hard, because in seventeen years they had never talked about her mother, not once. Zara had never seen a picture of her mom, didn’t even know the name of the woman who had birthed her. When she was old enough to see the shadow that passed over Nasir every time Zara asked about her, she had stopped asking.

Sure enough, her dad’s face was drawn tight; his smile had a raw, hesitant edge. “I guess it would be better to say it belonged to her family,” he continued, not quite meeting his daughter’s eyes. “It’s about time you had it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Zara said quietly. It was. Without question, it was the most stunning piece of jewellery she had ever seen, regal and magical. The sight of it tugged at something in her, the same primal, powerful something that drove her to dominate Caleb or push herself with her Parkour; she wanted it around her neck, wanted to feel it resting against her collarbone. But she hesitated.

Whoever her mother had been, the very mention of her made Nasir lock down and hide away in his studio, and Zara had never thought that pain was grief. Her mother had hurt her dad somehow, hurt him badly enough that the mere mention of her could give him a panic attack. In fairytales, plenty of kings were left wounded when their queens died, but Zara’s mother had done something worse than die. She knew it like she knew her own name.

Zara wasn’t sure she wanted to wear something that had belonged to someone who hurt her dad like that.

“Did my mom ever wear it?” she asked finally, battling between her need to protect Nasir and her aching hunger for the necklace.

But her dad shook his head. “She had another one made in gold. She thought this one was too plain.”

Too plain? Zara stared, not sure how anyone could come to that conclusion. Sure, the pendant wasn’t very colourful—but the crystal was soft and milky, like mist under moonlight, glimmering like a star as it spun slowly on its chain. The lines of it were simple, but graceful, smooth, lovely.

And her mother had never worn it.

That made the decision simple. She slipped the chain over her head and let the pendant settle below her throat, a cool, light weight. “In that case, thank you.” She touched it gently, resisting the urge to purr with pleasure at the beautiful gift. “I love it, dad.”

Her dad looked up from the grain of the table. They were so much the same, Zara thought suddenly: the same inky black hair, the same golden-brown eyes—like sand and bronze and fire—the same rich, dark skin, like ancient pottery. The same blazing temper; the same sense of humour. But seeing the vulnerable look in Nasir’s face, for the first time Zara realised that her dad had something she didn’t; armour, and behind it, a softness that could be wounded.

Zara had no armour, because she had no softness to protect. She was made of something harder than what Nasir was, something that cruel words and betrayals could not scratch.

The thought unsettled her as much as it pleased her, and after a moment she understood why: remembered a scene, when she was six or seven or eight, when she and her father were in a store together. A man was screaming abuse at Nasir—over what, Zara couldn’t remember; it could have been over a spilled shopping basket, or maybe the guy hadn’t liked the look of ‘those damned foreigners’—and Nasir had stood there and taken it. Stood frozen, and silent, braced as if for a blow—until Zara, six years old (or seven, or eight) had stepped forward and snarled _‘don’t yell at my daddy!’_

It had shocked Nasir out of his trance, and he had whisked them away. But that was it; that was the difference between them. Push at Zara, and she would snap back, bristling, unable to imagine backing down. Her dad would always protect _her_ , would fight for _her_ —she had never once doubted that—but he wouldn’t fight for himself.

Had he always been like that, or had Zara’s mother left that scar?

She felt a surge of protectiveness for him, her amazing dad, and reached out to touch his cheek, the way she would have if it were Caleb who was hurting. He started, but didn’t pull away.

“Really,” Zara said softly. “I love it. Thank you.”

The sore, bruised look faded from her father’s eyes. “You’re very welcome, Zara.”

Zara took her hand back, and the festivities continued; she went to put her new journal and Mrs Reines’ gifts away, and they adjourned to the living room to watch whatever the birthday girl wanted.

As the opening credits of the new Black Widow movie rolled across the screen, they settled in, Nasir and Tariq in the loveseat, Mrs Reines on one of the beanbags. Caleb and Zara took the couch, his head in her lap and her fingers in his hair, petting him softly.

The light of the TV caught on her ring, and her pendant.

*

“Are you sure you don’t want us at your debut?” Tariq asked later that evening.

Zara snorted. “Maybe when we make it to a club you’ve actually heard of.” She checked her hair in the hallway mirror. “Taking you somewhere like this place tonight would be just embarrassing.”

Nasir sat up in his chair. “That’s not what you’re wearing out, is it?”

“As it happens, yes.” Zara turned her head back and forth, making her hair swish over her shoulders. The crystal necklace blazed at her throat, a full moon against her gold skin. Over her favourite black corset, a zombie unicorn reared on the back of her leather jacket, white and pink and green, and her Doc Martens were bound tight with rainbow laces. “Don’t I look fabulous?”

“I’m a bit worried too many others will agree with you.” Nasir eyed her warily, taking in the ragged skinny jeans, the mis-matched earrings—a silver dagger at one earlobe, a grenade at the other, and never mind the twin emerald daith piercings. “Go put something else on, please.”

“Really, dad? Really?” With a roll of her eyes, Zara spun on her heel and stalked back towards her room. She knew better than to argue with _that_ tone of voice.

She just climbed down the drainpipe instead. Much easier.

ZARA SHAMMAS, GET BACK HERE her father texted four minutes later.

I MEAN IT, followed two minutes after that.

IF SOMEONE LAYS A HAND ON YOU BREAK THEIR FINGERS her phone chimed resignedly as she left the subway.

Tariq was more succinct. HAVE FUN!

Zara grinned, and put her phone away inside her jacket as she spotted the club.

Vatican had a reputation for taking chances on new and upcoming bands, groups that were only half a step away from their parents’ garages. Getting a spot on their roster didn’t really mean anything, especially not on a Thursday night like tonight. A Friday set, now, or a Saturday one, that would have been something, but this wasn’t as big a deal as her dad and Tariq wanted to think it was.

She still felt excitement like champagne pool in her fingers as she slipped in the back way, through the door meant for maintenance and catering and ever-hopeful musicians.

Inside, she had to stop for a second. The subway had been bad, but there were more people in the club than there had been in her carriage, and the scent of over a hundred strangers packed into a tight space hit her in a wave as she breathed in: a rush of sweat and perfume and carbonated drinks, skin and deodorant and mineral-based make-up, leather and cotton and denim and sex, all mixed up in a cocktail of pubescent humanity that made her blanch. Not for the first time, she wondered if she could do this.

But then there were the boys on the stage, and any thought of turning around and leaving vanished.

Erik, Will, Scott and Caleb were setting up, Erik helping Caleb calibrate his turntables for their set. It had taken Caleb and Zara almost two years of doing chores for the entire neighbourhood to afford all his DJ equipment—turntables and synthesizers were expensive—but it had been worth it; Caleb was a wizard with his discs. Between her voice, his fingers, Erik’s drums, Will’s guitar and Scott’s keyboard, Zara knew full well that they were going to bring the house down—if she could just deal with the stink of packed-in humanity long enough.

“Mistress Shammas!” Will called when he spotted her, grinning as she climbed up the steps to the stage. He had rebraided his cornrows for the occasion, so that they traced graceful wave-shapes over his dark skull. “You are looking _fine_ tonight!”

Zara allowed herself a satisfied smile. “Why thank you, darling,” she purred.

Will mimed a swoon, swaying backwards. “She called me darling!”

Scott swatted him for her.

Grinning, Zara stepped up behind Caleb. “You got here okay?” she asked, resting her hand on the back of his neck. She stroked the side of his throat with her thumb absently.

He relaxed into her touch. “Yeah, Will gave me and the babies a lift,” he called back over the music, patting the turntables fondly. He turned his head—and did a double-take as he saw her outfit up close and personal. “Woah.”

Zara smirked, and bent to kiss her seated boyfriend. “And that’s why I love you,” she purred into his ear. “You always know how to make a girl feel special.”

“It’s not hard when they’re as special as you,” he said without missing a beat, owning the dorkiness without shame. Concern touched his gaze. “Are you okay?”

He meant about the smells. She nodded. “I can handle it!”

“Awesome!” he said loudly.

The lights sparked and sparkled, and Zara closed her eyes, imagining that she could feel the touch of the pink and blue on her skin, soft as silk and bright as jewels. They’d used to joke about her incredible sense of smell, but really, it was kind of a pain; Zara’s dad had to buy expensive unscented laundry detergent and shampoo just so she could function, and even though he never complained, Zara felt bad about it. But the alternative was a permanent hay fever of watering eyes and emotional turbulence that made the worst case of PMS look like a grumpy kitten. Not that she would know: today was her seventeenth birthday, but she’d yet to experience the joys of the menses. Yet another way in which she was a freak.

The thought made her smirk. Who wanted to be normal, anyway?

She opened her eyes. “Let’s give them a night to remember,” she said, and Caleb spun his fingers over the turntables with a laugh.

*

Zara didn’t bother with an introduction, with talking the crowd over. When the manager gave them the nod she dropped her hand as if ordering an execution, and around her her boys snarled into life like a wolf pack, electronica magic cracking like a whip around the snapping bass. Fuck asking for the audience’s attention; they _demanded_ it, throwing their song into the pit like a grenade—

 

_“Phoenix kids rising up from the ashes,_

_You thought we’d choke but we’ve come to burn!_

_They tried to bury us but it won’t be that easy,_

_They thought we’d give up but they’re gonna learn!”_

 

All of Zara’s concerns dissolved, sugar in water and water in wine and the music they wrought rising up around her like a tsunami, a crashing wave of sound spinning like silk through her fingers, silk and light and fire. Javier played his drums like he was fighting a war and Caleb danced threads of neon lightning around them all, weaving them together with beat-beat-beats skipping and sliding and Will was right there with Zara, ripping at his strings like the ropes of fate and the mike was in her hand, cool metal-plastic turning hot under her fingers as she poured her soul in and watched it spill out, overflow, rip through the club like an earthquake—

 

_“Oh we’ve got fire in our hearts hearts hearts,_

_We’re gonna tear it all apart part part,_

_We’re here to set the world on fire—  
They gave birth to their own funeral pyre!”_

She had them, one and all, could smell the thick tide of excitement as the band lassoed their audience’s attention and dragged it to them, made it theirs. Her hair whipped around her like flames as she shrieked into the mike, ripping it from its stand and whirling across the stage, slamming her boots against the wooden slats in time with the beat. Caleb was bent over his decks, spinning the discs like plates and the lights were flashing on his laptop screen, and the others were running this with her, in time, in force, a tempo to snatch at hearts and pound through Zara’s veins.

 

_“Corporation conflagration,_

_Burn, baby, burn!_

_Mythopoeic so prismatic,_

_You think they’d be concerned!”_

 

Thrilling as a drug, adrenalin racing through every word and she was almost laughing, grinning, flashing her teeth at all the pretty boys and girls dancing to the spell of her voice.

“Phoenix kids, if you’re with me,” she sang, purring, smirking into the crowd;

 

_“Open wide and sing my song,_

_Spread your wings, love, you can do it—_

_Spread ’em wide and sing along!”_

 

Swelling, crashing, a tidal wave of sound and Zara felt powerful, felt like a goddess, ruling the room and it was so _effortless_ , so incredibly _easy!_ The lyrics just poured out of her, as easily as they had in practice, as smoothly as when she’d first written them; raw and mocking and darkly playful, making fun and making a point and it was like dancing, like flying, like leaping across the space between rooftops and knowing that your body would catch you. Because it would, because she was just that fucking good and she had the backup to prove it, the boys behind her like a legion, following their gods-damn commander to the end of the line and then building her a new gods-damn bridge, sonic fire and wild tempo and she bent into the mike and _howled—_

 

_“Phoenix kids rising up from the flames,_

_You can’t burn souls of fire!_

_They can’t snuff us out, they can’t make us be silent,_

_We’re not the ones who’re gonna expire!”_

And her boys—they tore into the chorus they knew so well and Zara snarled and sang, a dangerously fey grin flashing white teeth under the lights and her hair a forest fire, a valkyrie turned from war to song, ripping it out like a war-cry—

And before the closing chords, Zara already knew: the battle was won.

*

They played four more songs before their set was done, and Scott swore each was a bigger hit than the last. By the time they closed with _Pop Culture_ there were people doing their best to sing along with each chorus, jumping with their arms in the air to the lightning-bolt beats sizzling through the club.

 _“Neon Myths,_ kith and kin!” Zara called as they wrapped up, grinning. She blew a kiss into the crowd with a purr. “Remember the name! You’ll be seeing us again.”

“Hell yeah they will!” Will crowed once they were outside. He slung his arm around Javier’s shoulders, delight sharp and sweet on his rich umber skin. “We knocked them fucking _dead!”_

Scott and Caleb heaved, and the turntables slid into the back of Will’s van at last. The rest of the gear was already stowed away, and Will promised faithfully to bring it all back to his basement, their usual practice space.

“Are you surprised?” Zara asked, playfully raising her eyebrows.

“Not in the slightest,” Will declared. “How could it be otherwise, with such a dark delight as yourself to lead us to glory?”

Zara laughed. “You’re bad for my ego, Will.” She smirked. “Never stop.”

Caleb moved up against her side, and Zara hooked her fingers through the loops of his jeans, tugging him closer. He leaned his cheek against her hair with a quiet sigh. “We did good.”

A rush of warmth for him flooded her chest. “You did _great,”_ she told him, leaning up on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. “I’m so proud of you.”

He hummed softly, her pleasure reverberating through him, flavouring his scent with a note like chocolate, sweet and blissful. Zara felt her stomach clench tight with the urge to bite into him.

“Let’s stay for a bit,” she said impulsively. She put her free hand on his abdomen, lightly brushing her fingertips over the thin material of his shirt. She could feel the muscles underneath, tight and trim, honed by years of Parkour and Krav Maga. He’d gotten into both because of her, so she would have someone to practice with. He was nearly as good at them as she was, now. “I want to dance with you.”

He tensed under her hand, and she didn’t have to ask why. He was a geek, and he knew it; being home-schooled hadn’t helped. Performing was one thing—he was shielded by her, then, by the strength of her voice and the presence of the other guys. But dancing, out in a crowd where everyone could see…

“You guys coming?” Javier called, closing the van’s back door.

Zara searched Caleb’s eyes. “No,” she answered without looking away. “We’re going to stay for a while.”

Slowly, Caleb nodded, relaxing into her desire, and the thrill of it was a physical thing, heated velvet and fireworks bursting against a dark sky; that he trusted her enough to give himself up to her will, even in something so seemingly small as this. He would leave his comfort zone for her, at her word, because he knew she would take him so far and no further, no further than he could go.

Because he was hers.

Zara smiled, and drew him down, and kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered, nuzzling his lips, and when he said it back she felt it echo in her bones, embroidered in her DNA.

*

 _‘I want to see them look at you,’_ she told Caleb, when the rest of Neon Myths were gone. _‘I want them to see you and want you and realise that they can’t have you. I want everyone in there to know that you’re mine, and be sick with jealousy.’_

And they were. Zara could taste it in the back of her throat, the satisfying chilli-bite of frustrated lust and envy as strangers’ eyes licked Caleb up and down, took in the marks on his throat and her hands on him and realised he was taken. Because he was flustered and clumsy with it, not quite able to relax into the music that plucked and tugged at Zara’s pulse, demanding she _move_ —but he was still gorgeous. His almost-black hair was dark as a panther’s pelt, long enough to fall in his eyes and invite tangling fingers; his eyes were like milk chocolate, flecked with glints of hazel-gold half-hidden behind square glasses. He looked like another shy, innocent geek—until your eyes caught on that sweet mouth, with the hint of a wicked curl at the corners; until the definition beneath his rich brown skin became visible when he moved. Until you saw how he looked at Zara.

He was delicious, and perfect, and _hers_. And tonight she would finally have all of him.

The knowledge of it burned between them, searing so hot and bright it was all but visible. Zara was hyperaware of her own body, pressed so close to his; the soft caresses of her clothes shifting against her skin, the weight of Caleb’s hands on her hips, the sweat dampening her hair. The combined scents of over a hundred strangers hammered at her, but she didn’t care, because Caleb stared at her as if at a goddess and this teasing, this torturing of them both felt so good, so wicked and exquisite—

And then everything went red.

_Rage war threat threat thief danger!_

Zara snapped around faster than she had ever moved, blindly seeking the source of—of—of _that_ , that _smell_ , like an olfactory call to war; every hair on her body stood to attention and her blood came afire, hissing, lips pulled back from her teeth ready to bite, to tear, to _shred_ to wet bloody pieces the threat to her place, her male, her power—

Somewhere, distantly, she could hear Caleb saying her name, his hand on her arm trying to gain her attention, but Zara could see no one but the source of that enraging scent, a young woman on the other side of the club floor. She was a desert storm in a white dress, a lightning bolt with hair like a slash of ink and ochre skin, and Zara’s attention snapped to her like a silver whip, unable to see-sense-hear anyone else, anything else.

It was mutual, this visceral fury; their eyes locked across the crowd, and the unreasoning, impossible rage blazing under Zara’s skin jumped up to an 11, charring her veins ash-black. She snarled, even though there was no way the girl in the white dress could possibly hear her, and without thinking she dragged Caleb behind her, ignoring his protests, his questions, knowing only that Caleb was _hers_ and had to be protected.

Mutual. It was mutual, this inexplicable bloodthirstiness, because the other girl’s face twisted in response, a wild charcoal rage that Zara understood in her marrow: _my place, my prey, my pack!_

It almost threw Zara out of her anger, that realisation: _she_ was the one who had trespassed, not this stranger. Somehow, Zara had crossed some boundary, some line she hadn’t known to notice. For all her rage, she was the one at fault here.

Somehow. How did she know that?

As quickly as the thought had come, Zara saw the other girl’s expression smooth out, mastering the bloodlust. In its place came shock, like ice on skin, and she was still staring at Zara.

Zara tensed, her mind racing: did she stay and fight, or fly from here, and Caleb with her?

Before she could decide, two more faces appeared beside the girl in white. Zara glimpsed black leather and red jewels, but she couldn’t make herself look at them, couldn’t force her eyes away from the girl who was somehow a threat—

Except—

Except that one, the girl the threat the rage, turned away. And. Left.

Just like that.

She vanished into the depths of the club without looking back, and Zara hesitated, not sure what it meant, not sure where the other girl was going.

“We need to go,” she decided, catching Caleb’s hand. “Come on.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He didn’t fight her—he never fought her, not unless it was a game, and it soothed some of the nervous-fear-anger in her; he was safe, he was still hers, nothing could be wrong if that were still true. The girl in the white dress hadn’t hurt him, stolen him—

“Later,” she promised, trying to calm herself down. “I’ll explain later, let’s just _go_ —”

They were almost at the door when someone stepped out of the crowd in front of them, deliberately blocking their way, and Zara barely had time to register amber eyes and skin like firelight on gold before it hit her like a battering ram and an orgasm all wrapped up in one:

_Mine._

The world shifted, fell away. She was standing at the centre of the universe and there was only the three of them, Caleb’s hand in hers and this deadly-beautiful golden boy before her and she stood between them both while the stars revolved around them, jewels the size of planets dancing through space, dancing around this triad at their heart, and she knew it like gravity, like her own name—

 _Mine. You’re **mine**_ _._

With a jolt, time started again. She was in Vatican once more, her feet on the earth and Caleb’s fingers laced tight with hers, anchoring her to reality—but reality had changed, was not the same as when she’d left it.

The stranger’s gold eyes were wide and dark and she knew he felt it too, this gilded blade of a boy sheathed in black from head to toe: the sense of something locked immutably into place, a thread-rope-chain forged instantly and forever from his heart to her hand and if she pulled on it, if she wrapped it ’round her wrist and gave the softest tug he would fall like an angel at her feet, fall like a star. She could smell it on him, fir trees and sparklers and melted chocolate and he was trembling, vibrating with the echo of her heartbeat. It was written all over his face—pure _need_ , overwhelming and terrible and glorious, and for her, all for her, his pupils swollen to dark eclipses and when he swallowed she knew his mouth was dry, knew his voice was gone but he was a breath away from whimpering anyway. She didn’t need to look down to know he was blindingly, desperately hard; the smell of his arousal caught in her throat, thick and opiate-sweet and electrifying, and she was so wet, aching, viciously hungry to have him in her, to use him until he screamed for mercy—

_Mine._

One glance into his eyes, and he was drowning in her; he was drowned. He was _hers_ , body and soul.

She moved, beyond words, to touch him; to reach for him, to call him to her. _Mine, mine, my darling-lover-mate; come to me and be my own, my treasure…_

His eyes showed only a sliver of darkened bronze around his pupils now, and they stared at her outstretched fingers with a look of such fervent, painful longing that Zara could hardly breathe. He would take her hand, as Caleb had her other; he would go to his knees and press his face to her hip, and there would be such relief in his face, a relief like tears, like homecoming—

_Yours—_

But just before his fingers could brush hers, something hard and ugly swept across his beautiful face, and he jerked away, snatching his hand back. In his other hand was a long blade of ruby glass or crystal Zara hadn’t seen until now. “No!” he said sharply, loudly, anger and something like fear, like panic, staining the glory of those eyes, “I will not—I reject you, I repudiate you, I acknowledge no claim of yours—”

Caleb snarled.

Snarled and _crouched_ , bending as if he meant to spring at the blond and tear out his throat; he actually slipped his hand from Zara’s, and his face—Zara had never seen him look like that before, couldn’t see her best-loved boy in that face for a too-long moment; it was _rage_ , rage and blind, animal threat, and Zara had a beat to wonder if that was how she had looked staring at the girl in white, because it looked like the same fury, the same instinctive need to do murder—

The stranger shot Caleb a sharp look—one that quickly morphed into disbelief. He jerked further away from Zara, swearing, and vanished his red knife away somewhere, raising his hands so that Caleb could see they were empty. “What in Sammael’s name are you doing bringing a new-bonded _aatam_ here?” he said through gritted teeth. Even angry, he looked like an Egyptian prince, his golden face framed by a lion’s mane of sable hair as fine as sendal; Zara itched to run her fingers through it…

It took her a moment to realise that he was talking to her, but since she didn’t understand what he’d said, she ignored him. “Caleb,” she said, turning her body to face her boyfriend head on, “hey. Look at me.”

Caleb’s gaze was locked on the stranger; he didn’t even glance at her, and suddenly Zara had had enough. With a snarl of her own, she stepped between Caleb and the other male, forcing Caleb to see her. “I said _look at me,_ Caleb Reines!”

His attention snapped to her at last. He looked like an animal, something wild and untamed, and it shivered through her, the urge to master him like this. But she didn’t want to put him on his knees here in the club; they were already making too much of a scene.

“That’s right,” she crooned. She wasn’t sure he could hear her over the music pounding from the club’s speakers, but he was watching her mouth, and the blank, mindless rage slowly drained from his face as she kept talking. “Calm down, dearling. It’s all right. I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll take care of it.” She stepped closer to him, curling her hand around the back of his neck. “You can relax. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He did, her darling, her perfect boy—he relaxed under her touch, the bowstring-tension melting from his spine as she rubbed at his neck. His shoulders slumped, and abruptly he was breathing hard, as if he’d just run a marathon. He blinked, and the manic-maniac gleam faded from his eyes. “Zara…?”

“Ssh,” she murmured, wondering what had just happened, not caring enough to let it distract her from her Caleb, “it’s okay. You’re all right.”

“I—I feel really strange…”

“He shouldn’t be here,” the lion-prince said harshly from behind them. Her lion. Her body still burned, hungry and wet, and the snap of his voice—rude, defiant, totally unsubmissive—made her clench her teeth hard with the urge to pin him flat on the floor until he learned some manners. “Adonis, how new is your bond?”

At the sound of his voice, Caleb snapped to alertness again, his eyes glazing over. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and he snarled.

“Shut up!” Zara snapped at the lion-boy, placing both her hands on Caleb’s chest. “This is your fault, you’re the one doing this to him!”

“He shouldn’t even be here!” the lion repeated angrily. He might have said more, but Zara had her hands full; Caleb didn’t push against her hold, but only just, his body held tense and taunt, vibrating with readiness. The moment she let her attention wander, he would spring, and she didn’t have time to wonder what was wrong, what the strange guy was doing, because Caleb wasn’t in control of himself and he needed her, needed her to take care of him and keep him safe—

“Davi, Iyrin damn you, you were supposed to wait for me!”

A figure pushed its way out of the crowd, glaring at the lion-prince _(at_ Davi _; the name dropped into Zara’s chest like a gold coin into a pool)_. Zara, used to identifying people by smell, couldn’t get a read on the newcomer—she couldn’t even tell if Davi’s friend was male or female; ze smelled like both and neither, zir scent shifting even as Zara breathed it in. Zir dark hair was pulled back into a scruffy ponytail, and ze was pretty, almost beautifully androgynous; the lines of zir face were enough like that of the girl in the white dress that Zara immediately knew they had to be related. But there was no rage-scent hanging around this person, nothing like it; if anything zir scent was…kind of relaxing, actually.

Relaxing or not, the interruption came at just the wrong moment; Zara started, and in that second Caleb lunged past her. Zara snatched at his shirt but missed and it was so easy for most people to underestimate Caleb, to see the shy smile and neat glasses and not look for more, but he had nearly as many Krav Maga trophies as Zara did and he could _hurt_ someone—

Could hurt her Davi—

Except that Davi ducked away from the elbow Caleb swung at his throat, bending backwards like a dancer, like a reed, too fast to be real.

“What are you doing?” Davi’s friend asked, and Zara realised ze was speaking to _her_ ; staring at Zara, zir face was appalled. “Davi isn’t a threat, call him off!”

Davi refused to engage, darting back and forth in the small space to get away from Caleb’s attacks but he wasn’t trying to hit back, was clearly staying on the defensive and Zara didn’t know why but she was too grateful to care, too afraid of the blank, mindless rage in Caleb’s face to worry about Davi’s motive.

“He won’t listen to me!” she told the enby. “I can’t make him listen, I don’t know what Davi is doing to him—”

Davi slid away from Caleb’s fist, swinging around and past the other boy, and as he did Zara saw his nostrils flare, thought incredulously _he can smell things like I can_ even as Davi’s eyes went wide with disbelief.

“He’s claimed but not bonded, Ele for Lilith’s sake _help me_ —”

The enby—Ele, presumably—went pale. Ze ran at Caleb without another word, and Zara saw something like a crystal pen in zir left hand before ze shoved it in a pocket and darted darting between the two boys and, holding zir hands up at Caleb.

“Woah, boy, easy. Calm down.”

Caleb stopped before he hit zir. He snarled, dropping to a crouch, but the enby just shook zir head, spreading zir fingers. “Hey, no, none of that now. You did good, your _lilit_ is safe and sound but you’re done now, you kept her safe. She’s still yours.”

Ze kept talking, speaking slowly and evenly as if ze were coaxing a wild horse. Zara had no idea what ze thought ze was doing until the scent coming off the enby finally reached her, and she almost gasped at the unexpectedness strangeness of it. The enby smelled like lavender and snow, an olfactory xanax; zir scent slid into Zara’s lungs like incense and all her confusion and angry fear just…just melted away. Suddenly none of it seemed important; the girl in white, the impossible rage that had swept over Zara at the sight of her, the rush of need-want- _mine_ tied to the sight-scent of Davi and the fear of what was happening to Caleb… It was all going to be all right, the enby’s scent promised; everything was good, everything was fine…

It was working on Caleb too. At first his eyes were fixed on Davi, who watched warily from behind Ele, but as the seconds passed his gaze became unfocussed, even dreamy. As if he were being drugged.

A rush of revulsion tore through Zara, waking her up like a bucket of cold water. She could still smell the perfume, but its effect was suddenly muted and dull. “What are you doing to him?” she hissed. Striding forward, she grabbed Caleb’s wrist and pulled him behind her, away from these strangers and their aerosol-drugs—because what else could they be, what other reason was there for her fury and her lust and Caleb’s sudden bloodthirstiness? “Leave him alone!”

Ele blinked at her, confused. “I’m just soothing him, Syre,” ze said, bemused but formal. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re drugging him!” Zara snapped. “Get away from us before I call the cops!”

“The—?” If anything, Ele’s confusion deepened. Ze wasn’t the only one: so close to zir, Zara could taste the enby’s scent, and it was…it just _was_. Every girl or woman Zara had ever met had rankled at her like an itch, while the males, except for Caleb, left her cold: this Ele person did neither. Ze felt like the eye of the storm, the embodiment of serenity: just standing next to zir made Zara feel a little calmer, a little more able to think clearly. “Syre, I don’t understand.”

“She brought an unMarked _aatam_ to a nightclub, and you’re expecting reason from her?” Davi said sarcastically.

“Be quiet!” Ele glanced apologetically at Zara. “He wasn’t raised in an _aieon_ , Syre. I’m afraid he’s a bit of a savage.” Ze cleared zir throat. “Um, the Solsaltare Aieon-na bids you welcome, but asks that you please make your way to the city Haven. The _lilitare_ —” ze pronounced it lilit-are-ray “—is hunting tonight, and will receive you as soon as she’s found her prey.”

Even the clarifying effect of Ele’s presence couldn’t make zir declaration make sense. “I have no idea what you just said,” Zara said, slowly and clearly because she was obviously talking to a lunatic, “but we’re leaving now. Follow us, and I really will call the police.” Why hadn’t anyone noticed all this going on? She didn’t want to take her eyes off Ele to find out. “Come on, Caleb, let’s go.”

Neither Ele nor Davi made any move to stop her, although Davi’s eyes were hot on her, watching her walk away. She saw something painful and hungry in his face, something anguished and pleading—and then it was gone, and he looked away from her, his shoulders set and his hands curled into fists.

It took an enormous effort of will not to run to him, not to answer the plea she glimpsed in his face. But there was Caleb, who was too pale and his eyes shocky and dark, and she would not risk him by staying here even a moment longer. Hardening her heart, and ignoring the howl of frustrated possessiveness ringing in her head, she led Caleb away from the magically cleared space at the heart of the crowd, almost tripping over a smooth white stone on the floor as she did so.

Where the hell had that come from?

Outside, the humidity of a New York summer night slapped her in the face. They were in the back alley, she realised; she had automatically gone for the performers’ entrance. Didn’t matter. She turned to Caleb. “Are you okay?”

“I…think so?” He blinked at her from behind his glasses, but he was still paler than she liked. “What just happened?”

“I have no idea,” she said honestly. “I think maybe they had some kind of drugs in aerosol cans? I don’t know what else could have done all that.”

He was silent for a second. “I’ve never felt like that before,” he said quietly. “I just… I was going to kill that guy. Really kill him. I wanted to rip him to pieces.” He was shaking; Zara pulled him close and wrapped her arms around his torso. “What kind of drug does that?”

“I don’t know,” Zara repeated softly. She hated having to tell Caleb that, hated not knowing. She was supposed to know; she was supposed to keep him safe. “Let’s get home and talk to dad and Tariq, okay? They’ll figure out what to do.”

Caleb nodded shakily. “Okay.” He took her hand when she offered it. “Figures we’d get the X-Files stuff the same night as our first time on stage, right?”

“Just our luck,” she agreed.

They were heading towards the street when it happened again: between one blink and the next Zara’s vision went red, the world washed in wet, bloody crimson, and the anger that had swept over her with the girl in white was nothing to this, a spark against the dark sun suddenly exploding in Zara’s chest, so hot and blinding her very bones caught fire; her blood turned to blazing gold and the stink of sulphur snagged on her snarl, and there, right _there_ , a man-shape came hurtling around the corner and down into the alley, towards Zara and Caleb—

_Caleb—_

This thing was not a man; it was abomination, it was evil, every cell of her body screamed out for her to wipe it off the face of the planet and _it was coming at Caleb—_

Something in Zara tore open, and bright, hot gold gushed through her and out of her; she screamed, with Ishtar’s rage and the sweetest pain this world could know; and the alley was suddenly filled with light, with twin sweeping walls of white and gold light anchored in her heart—

Two walls of interwoven swords—

The man-shape skidded to a halt, its neon-blue eyes suddenly gone black as ink. There was horror in its face, and terror, and Zara exulted in it, shrieked a cry of wild triumph as she sprang towards her prey. It opened a mouth full of shark teeth to snarl defiance at her and her wings came slicing down like guillotines, blade-feathers bristling and black blood sprayed across the alley wall in a graffiti of dark oil and vengeance.

The man-shape dropped to the ground. The body was in three pieces; its head bounced a little way from the rest of the corpse, trailing that disgusting inky blood. The smell of it was enough to make Zara gag; some part of her was relieved none of it had touched her, or her—

Her _wings_ —

She flexed them; it was easy. They had almost no weight, translucent sheets of light and metal that responded to her thoughts as smoothly as did her arms. The glow of them fell on the face of the girl in the white dress, standing stunned near the mouth of the alley. She must have been following the man-shape.

Zara was breathing hard. She felt warm and exhilarated, her pulse pounding in her wrists; there was laughter bubbling up her throat. The fabric of her bra rubbed against her nipples, the friction suddenly too much.

Was this what being drunk felt like?

She turned around to look at Caleb; her ghostly wings slid through the brick of the alley walls as if they _(wings or walls?)_ weren’t there. But Caleb was there, standing where she’d left him, unmarked by blood or savage shark teeth. Satisfaction curled through Zara like velvet; she had protected him. She had kept him safe.

He smelled of lust, staring at her, his eyes almost as dark as the monster’s had been, his expression a mess of helpless, adoring desire, breathless and desperate. Zara purred, pleased.

“I was trying to herd it _away_ from you—” She had forgotten the other girl. Zara glanced at her, her eyes narrowing. Distantly, she was aware of the corpse dissolving into thick, foul smoke, but she didn’t care about that. Her attention was laser-focussed on the stranger. She was too close to Zara’s Caleb.

“—And for Lilith’s sake, put your wings away! Anyone could see you!” The girl paused. She stepped forward, frowning slightly; Zara saw her inhale deeply. _“Oh_ , someone smells _delicious_. _”_ She tilted her head, looking under Zara’s outstretched wings. “Is he yours?”

Zara hissed at the interest in her voice. She snapped her wings down, blocking Caleb from view. _“Mine,”_ she snarled.

“I don’t smell a Mark,” the other girl said lightly. Her expression hardened slightly. In the corner of Zara’s eye the man-shape’s corpse was almost gone, disintegrating into greasy ashes, but she didn’t take her attention from the other girl for an instant. The antagonism from before was building, bubbling just under the surface; it made Zara want to snap her teeth, or better yet, swipe her bladed wings at the other girl’s smug face. “Who are you? What are you doing in this canton?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And she wasn’t going to give this girl her name.

“You—” The white princess dress swirled around her as the girl came closer still; Zara hissed at her again, but this time she hissed back, bristling, that raw rage rippling over her face. “Lying isn’t going to save you. You—”

Suddenly she stopped. A frown settled over her elegant face, the anger replaced by a sudden confusion. “Wait…” The frown deepened; she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and Zara knew right down to the bone that the other girl was scenting her.

 _Like an animal,_ some still-rational part of her mind thought, but then the other girl’s eyes snapped open, horrified.

“Adam’s balls, you’re unmanifested!” She sounded appalled. “What in the Watchers’ names are you _doing_ here? Where’s your _aieon?_ ” She looked past Zara at Caleb. “Is he all you have with you?!”

It was all too bewildering, new terms and confusion battering at Zara’s battle-hazed thoughts like hammers, like wings. She couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t make sense of anything, and her confusion made her angry, angrier. “Leave us _alone!”_ she shouted. She snapped a wing back and curled it around Caleb, using it to pull him against her. He was still mid-gasp when she grabbed him in her arms, flared both her wings, and shot up off the ground.

Caleb yelped and clung to her as the ground vanished beneath them, but there was no fear-scent on his skin, only a dazed surprise. He was warm against her body, and the rush of cool air in her face cleared her mind a little, blew some of the terror-fury away like wind shredding toxic smoke; enough that she could wonder at how light he felt in her arms, enough that she could register the smell of his desire again.

She did not wonder about her wings, about her flight. She only wanted to go home. She wanted her dad and Tariq to explain what was going on and make it better.

Caleb nuzzled her neck as her wings beat hard, carrying them up and away. Heat shimmered about her feathers, keeping them both warm, and they streaked like a star. The fear was dissolving, and in its place exhilaration was building again, disbelieving awe and delight spinning through her ribcage like a suncatcher. Below them the city was a treasure-chest of neon gems and blazing candleflames, cars flashing over the roads like bioluminescent insects. Fluorescent billboards dazzled, and the skyscrapers looked decked out for Christmas, alight with glittering diamonds. Up here the human stink was all but gone, leaving only the incredible beauty of what mortals had built just because they could.

 _This is my home. This is my city._ The thought brought with it an immense sense of pride.

Caleb made a soft mewling sound, and the bolt of hunger it elicited nearly took her out of the sky. Breathing hard, Zara shook her head as she righted herself; the city might be gorgeous, but she recognised nothing from up here, and even if she had, it was dark. She didn’t know how to get home, and they couldn’t take the subway with wings sprouting from her back. Even New Yorkers would blink at _that_.

She picked a rooftop at random and dove, marvelling at how easy it was, at the rush of dancing with gravity. Shouldn’t this be harder? Baby birds had to learn how to fly, but Zara touched down on the concrete as if she’d been doing it for years. She didn’t even drop Caleb.

The moment she let go of him, he dropped himself; without a word he folded to his knees, gasping, his hands flying behind his back to clasp at the base of his spine. Zara’s wings glowed, shedding light across the rooftop; when Caleb looked up at her she could see the glaze of need in his eyes, the flush on his cheeks. Now that the wind wasn’t blowing his scent away the aroma of his desire was overwhelming, impossible to resist even as the beauty of him caught in Zara’s throat, made her heart stutter.

She had thought New York by night was beautiful, but Caleb—her Caleb—

“Zara,” he whispered, whimpered, and she groaned, closing her eyes for an instant because she had to, had to or would lose any shred of control. “Zara, please—please—” She opened her eyes to see him rock his hips, panting, the hard bulge of his arousal pressing against his jeans. Was that a wet spot darkening the denim? “I—I don’t—I _need_ you, God, _please_ —”

There was fear in the lust, Zara realised, swallowing hard; Caleb was scared, afraid of the intensity of this need, and it eased some of the pressure on her own brain. Her sex was aching almost to the point of pain, but he was afraid.

She would take care of him.

“Ssh,” she murmured, stepping closer to him; she swept her wings around him as she cupped his face, and he shuddered, his eyes rolling a little as the feathers brushed his skin. “Ssh, darling, my perfect boy. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.” She bent her head to kiss him, biting back the urge to moan as his lips parted instantly under hers, pleading without words for more.

She gave it to him. Locked her own need away, and laid him down on one of her wings, curling the tips of her primaries around his body. “I’ve got you,” she whispered, over and over again—as his clothes came off, as he writhed against the silkiness of her plumage, as he begged with tears in his eyes for release, for her.

She took him in her mouth, and her feathers muffled his cries, kept them only for her.

And when he was done—panting, shivering, his fever soothed—her wings wrapped around him and held him tight as they both passed out, with no one but the stars to witness.

* * *

NOTES

 

The song Neon Myths sing is mine, and copyright to me! Please don't use without permission.

Kith and kin means friends and family—‘kith’ are friends, ‘kin’ are family. Among other things, it’s a non-gendered way of referring to your audience, instead of saying something like ‘ladies and gentlemen’.

Sammael is one of the most interesting angelic figures; the angel of death and God’s right (or sometimes left) hand, Sammael is the father of demons but is unequivocally not one of the Fallen. The traditional understanding is that xe is not Fallen because God needs xem too much to kick xem out of Heaven. Xe is one of only two angels I know of that has such ambiguous/controversial standing in the celestial hierarchy.

Sendal was a thin, light silk made/used in the Middle Ages.

Iyrin is the name of the Watchers—angels sent to watch over/study humanity before the Flood—in Aramaic.

Enby is a queer term for someone who is non-binary; Zara refers to Ele this way in her thoughts because she can’t figure out what gender (if any) Ele is from Ele’s scent. 

Syre is pronounced sire.

Ishtar is a Mesopotamian goddess of Heaven and war, among other things.

Canton is an old French word literally meaning something like ‘area’; in this verse the Nephilim use it to refer to territories controlled/under the dominion of different people.


	3. Chapter Two - The White Rose

She woke up because her chest was vibrating.

Zara blinked groggily, her dream of ruby swords and golden wings dissipating like incense in the harsh glare of sunlight, leaving behind only the faint scent of copper and ozone. Her back ached. When had her bed become so hard, and why was it so _bright_ —?

She bolted upright, slapped awake by a jolt of adrenalin. Last night—the performance, the girl in the dress, Davi, monster, _wings_ —

Wings that were gone now. Zara flexed her shoulders tentatively, feeling stupid, but no living rivers of light sprang from her spine. Could she have dreamed them? Or maybe they’d been a hallucination, a side-effect of whatever had turned Caleb into the Hulk…? That could be possible. It even sounded likely—far more likely than…

_Than the idea that I actually flew._

She ignored the soft pang of regret that played her ribcage like a xylophone, tried not to remember how amazing it had felt to fly above the night-lit city with Caleb in her arms.

_It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real._

What absolutely _was_ real was that Caleb was lying next to her, deeply asleep, his dreams rising from his naked skin in soft eddies of brown sugar and violets. They were on the rooftop of some random building, and judging from the position of the sun, it was mid-afternoon.

_Dad is going to kill me._

Her phone stopped vibrating, which reminded her that it had been vibrating in the first place; she swore viciously and yanked it out of her pocket. Too late; it went still in her hand.

_And Tariq will hide the body._

She swiped past the screensaver _(the sweet curve of a naked hipbone; Caleb’s)_ and winced. Twenty-seven missed calls, and so many texts she was a little surprised her phone hadn’t given up and burst into flames.

 _They must be going out of their minds,_ she thought, guilt pooling like venom in her stomach as she pressed her father’s contact and raised the phone to her ear, listening to it ring. _And I don’t blame them one little bit…_ Nothing like this had ever happened before; she’d never given her dad and Tariq any reason to worry, never stayed out late or gone drinking or…anything, really. Why would she, when she had Caleb? She’d never needed anything else but her best friend-turned-boyfriend and her family.

No wonder they were freaking out.

Her phone rang and rang. Apprehension began to gather at the back of Zara’s throat, barely noticeable at first, but soon it was like breathing in smoke, burning and burning. Her dad _always_ picked up after the first ring.

 _And he called just a second ago…_ Could he be mad at her? No, of course he was furious with her, but he wouldn’t be so petty as to not answer her call. He wouldn’t do that.

The call clicked to voicemail, and Zara swallowed. “Dad, it’s me. I’m so sorry for not coming home—some weird stuff happened last night, but we’re both safe and we’ll be home soon.” She made her voice calm and authoritative, as if she were talking to Caleb. “Call me back when you get this.” She paused. “I love you,” she added, more softly.

Stomach churning, she hung up and stared at the screen of her phone, expecting to see it light up with her dad’s returned call any second.

It didn’t.

After a few minutes, she put the phone away, trying to ignore the growing sense of unease, and nuzzled the back of Caleb’s neck. “Dearling? I think you should wake up now.”

A shot of lemon-citrus melted through the sleepy violets-and-sugar smell of Caleb’s dreams, and as she stroked her palm over his side he stirred under her hand. “Zara…?”

His skin was oily. Zara frowned and raised her hand, tilting it so the slickness on her fingers gleamed in the sunlight. _What the…?_

She wiped it off on the ground.

“Um, Zara?” Caleb rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky, his eyes gone wide. “Where the hell are we?”

“On a rooftop somewhere. I think we made a run while we were high.” A Parkour run, she meant, because going for a jog didn’t usually end at the top of an apartment block. “How are you feeling?”

“High… Oh, shit.” He sat up quickly. “You—you had _wings_ , and that guy in the alley—”

“I feel confident in saying those were all hallucinations,” Zara said firmly. “Those people at Vatican must have drugged us.”

“Aerosol drugs,” Caleb mumbled. He put his head in his hands. “Yeah, I remember you saying that last night. Before the wings.” He rubbed his forehead. “Okay, but if you tell me I did a run skyclad, I’m going back to sleep.”

But since he hadn’t gone running naked—Zara distinctly remembered taking off his clothes the night before—but then again, she remembered flying, so—it was an easy thing to gather his clothes from where they’d been scattered across the rooftop.

He was pulling on his shirt when Zara’s phone rang again.

This time Zara grabbed it instantly, swiping the screen to answer the call and slapping it against her ear. “Dad? I’m so sorry, Caleb and I’ll be home soon—”

“No!” her dad said sharply, and Zara froze, because that single syllable was imbued with so much intensity and fear— “Don’t come home, don’t you _dare_ come home. You and Caleb have to—”

A woman’s scream pierced the background; Zara heard Tariq’s voice in the distance shout “Hana!” Hana was Caleb’s mother.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Zara demanded, and saw Caleb’s gaze snap to her, alerted by the brittle panic in her voice. “Where are you? Was that Caleb’s mom?”

“What about my mom?” Caleb asked, but Zara barely heard him.

“Zara, in the saved places on your Google Maps app there’s a place listed as ‘dry cleaning’. You take Caleb and you go there as fast as you can, you don’t stop for anything—” There was a crashing noise, and Nasir grunted as if in pain. “When you get there, tell them your name is Celesistar and your mother didn’t repent. Tell them she’s after the Seal. Okay? Do you have all that?”

“Dry cleaning? My _mother?_ Dad, what are you talking about, what’s going on?”

“I love you, angel.” Her dad’s voice was thick; she thought he might be close to tears, and the thought made her want to scream, _no no this is all wrong what’s happening you have to be okay!_ “I love you so much. You’re the best thing I’ve ever done.” His deep, shuddering breath knifed down Zara’s spine. “Don’t come home.”

The disconnect tone whined in Zara’s ear.

“Dad? Dad, wait! _Dad!”_

“Zara, you’re screaming.” Caleb’s voice was gentle, but his fear was a haze of tea tree and hot milk, sick and tangy in her nose. It set her skin to prickling, sparks and nitro-glycerine. “What’s happened?”

Zara stared at her phone. She had no name for what she felt, didn’t know if it was shock or fear or anger or some hybrid born of all three. “We have to get home,” she heard herself say, because there was no other decision she could make. “Right _now.”_

*

Apartment buildings in New York tended to cluster together; some of them even stretched entire blocks. It didn’t take two Parkour kids long to find their way down to ground level, switching between fire escapes and drainpipes and balconies as required, and once they hit the street there was a subway station and a train and every tick-tick-tick of the clock was a grenade in Zara’s chest.

_Please please please, let dad and Tariq and Mrs Reines be okay…_

Beside her on the train, Caleb stood still and quiet, clutching a pole for balance. His other arm was around Zara’s waist, holding her tight. He knew only as much as she did, but it was too much, and not enough. With her ear pressed to his chest, Zara could hear his heart pounding like one of Javier’s drum solos.

It took them maybe twenty minutes from the end of Nasir’s call to reach home. They hadn’t been as far away as Zara had feared, but she was still terrified it was too far as she bolted from the subway with Caleb right behind her. Thank all the gods she hadn’t worn high heels last night; her soles slammed hard against the pavement, beating like her heart, and she almost, almost flew—

_(What she wouldn’t have given for wings, now, right now, to reach home even faster—)_

Home was a big brownstone that had once been grand, but had in recent years been divided into apartments and gone a little drab; the paint on the door was peeling, and some of the windows begged for a proper scrubbing. Zara’s dad said that the ivy growing across the brick was bad for it and would weaken the structure, but it was so pretty that he still came out in autumn to sit on the sidewalk and paint the rioting colours, all sunset and flames—

_(He will do it again, he’s fine, he will paint for years and years and years yet—)_

But she barely saw any of it, when she finally reached the gate; not the dirty windows or the ivy just beginning to turn red. Only the front door, which had been ripped off its hinges and lay discarded next to the porch, and let loose the stench of blood from inside the house.

It was a thick copper-and-iron stench that touched the back of her throat like a finger, like fire, searing through her every cell and leaving crimson lightning in its wake. Not dead menstrual blood, not the few live drops scattered from a sliced finger in the kitchen or a knee scraped in a Parkour roll—this was overwhelming and terrible, drowning out the smell of home.

“Call the cops!” she yelled at Caleb over her shoulder. She should have called 911 the second her dad hung up on her, but she didn’t, and now— “And an ambulance. And _stay here.”_

She used what they jokingly called her Alpha Tone to make it stick, that particular pitch and inflection that made Caleb’s eyes glaze over and his knees go weak; she saw him lock in place a few feet down the pavement before she pushed open the gate and walked up to the house.

Every step carried the tang of her father’s blood deep into her lungs. It was like walking into a fog that only she could see; she could almost _feel_ the scent against her skin, pressing on her like something tangible, and in response something glittering and razor-edged rose up in her, something that flowed cold and terrible as mercury through her veins. Without conscious thought her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl, because the dirty skylight made the old foyer dim and dark but not enough so to hide the bloodstains soaking into the carpeted stairs; her dad’s blood, and Tariq’s, but the smell of it was not enough to distract her from the myriad other scents that hadn’t been here when she left last night—the smell of _people_ , people like her and her dad and Tariq and Caleb _(and Davi and Ele, her mind added in a whisper)_ , people who smelled real in a way that people on the street never did. There’d been men here, males like her father and Tariq—four, five, six of them, each one’s scent overlaid with something _else_ , a sick perfume that drew a soft hiss of rage from between Zara’s teeth. She _hated_ it, that smell, she wanted to track down its source and tear it apart with her bare hands—she almost did, turned away from the stairs for a half-breath fully intending to follow it out the door and wherever it led, before she caught herself. But it was hard to focus on anything else, suddenly; it screamed _intruder,_ that scent, screamed _threat_ and _thief,_ scraping the same unreasoning fury as that girl at the club last night—

Only worse, because whoever it was had hurt her dad and Tariq and she would _kill_ them, she would kill the intruder a thousand times for every drop of Nasir and Tariq’s blood they’d spilled—

By the time she reached the landing she had every scent memorised; the six males _(sage violet white tea cucumber birch clove)_ and that one other, the one who was like her and Mrs Reines, who was female and _wrong_ ; thick, cloying rose-scent and marzipan and salt. That one had hung back while her males did the work, had stood _here_ and watched while they ripped apart the door of Nasir’s apartment. Bits of wood and splinters were scattered across the landing; Zara’s foot nudged the brass doorknob as she moved closer to her home, stepping lightly, silently.

The smell of blood was even stronger here.

She paused in the doorway, resting a hand on the door frame and straining to hear—anything. Any sign that the people who had done this were still here. Her dad’s voice, or Tariq’s. But all she could hear was her own breathing, her own furious heartbeat.

Nasir had always been something of a paranoid father. Zara had grown up knowing there were a dozen guns concealed around their home, and twice that many knives––her dad had given her a fake lipstick that twisted open into a vicious dagger for her twelfth birthday, then spent the next six months teaching her how to use it; every birthday since then had come with a new blade, until yesterday. No matter where you were in the apartment, there was always something sharp hidden within easy reach. She and Caleb used to spend sleepovers coming up with the most outlandish explanations they could think of for Nasir’s fears; he was on the run from the Yakuza, he was ex-KGB, his family were Arabic royalty and if they ever found him, they would drag him back to the Middle East to marry some oil tycoon’s Chihuahua-loving daughter…

They’d never believed any of it, but now, as Zara drew the Beretta M9 from where it was taped to the underside of the hall table, she remembered what Nasir had said to her on the phone: _‘Your mother didn’t repent.’_ She remembered the stink of _other_ that was all over the apartment, and wondered if the thing Nasir had been afraid of all these years—the reason he’d enrolled Zara in Krav Maga, the reason he’d insisted she learn Parkour, the reason he’d taken her and Caleb to the gun ranges every weekend for the last four years—was because her mother wasn’t dead at all.

Braced for anything—for a monster, for a mother, for them to be the same thing—Zara searched the apartment room by room, thumbing off the Beretta’s safety as she went. It was as if a hurricane had blown through; chairs were overturned and broken, paintings fallen from the walls. One of the bookcases had been knocked over, its contents scattered across the floor. The mirror in the hallway was broken, the frame empty, vicious silver shards rained down to puddle beneath it. More telling still was the miasma of fear and desperation, panic and pain and rage that seemed embedded in the walls, a cocktail that at any other time would have made Zara retch, but now only made her feel colder; stagnant water and cigarette stink, valerian and pepper and yew flowers. And blood, always blood, not quite overpowering enough to drown out the rose-marzipan-salt scent that whispered _enemy_ in a language older and purer than words.

She found Mrs Reines in the kitchen. She was lying on the floor, surrounded by a slick red lake that pooled around her body like a demonic aura; the stench of it was unbelievable, rust-raw and thick as smog. Zara didn’t blink, felt nothing at the sight, just checked the corners of the room for hidden invaders and continued on until she’d cleared the entire apartment, until it was clear that there was no one else here. No strange males with blood on their hands. No Tariq. No Nasir. No rose-stinking stranger.

Only when she was sure it was safe did she hit the safety on her gun and go back to the kitchen. The stink of all that blood should have made her choke, should have had her retching and fighting not to throw up, but her gag reflex had gone out like a light and she felt nothing. She paused in the doorway and found herself staring at Mrs Reines dispassionately, cataloguing her injuries as coolly as a coroner; something sharp had slashed deeply and repeatedly at the woman’s chest, at least four or five neat-edged strikes criss-crossing the chest and torso. There might have been more, but Mrs Reines’ dress was soaked in crimson and it was difficult to evaluate the damage. They might have been from a knife—

_(Wings of living light and metal, sweeping down like guillotines—)_

Zara blinked, and realised that she was just standing here in the doorway while her boyfriend’s mother bled to death on the floor.

She expected sudden panic to burst within her at the realisation; it didn’t. She set the gun on the kitchen counter and found aluminium foil, tape and scissors, quickly and deftly but without any desperate need for haste driving her. Even when she knelt down beside Mrs Reines and started cutting and folding the foil the way Tariq had shown her, making sure each patch was at least two inches wider than the cuts she used them on, she felt no fear. No panic or desperation. Only a cool indifference. She did what she had to because it had to be done, but it couldn’t touch her, didn’t faze her, not even when she had to push her fingers into one of the wounds to establish how large it was; the slick, wet slide of blood and flesh didn’t unnerve her, and the terrible smell didn’t bother her. Mrs Reines’ blood was soaking into Zara’s jeans and she didn’t care. Her dad and Tariq were gone, missing, their blood splattered on walls and drying on the stairs outside, but that, too, was suddenly distant and far away. There was only the indifferent calm, and while part of her realized that this was bizarre, the rest shrugged and got on with what needed to be done.

She was on the second-last patch when Mrs Reines stirred. “Zara…?”

“There’s an ambulance on the way,” Zara said without looking at her; her blood-sticky fingers deftly folded and re-folded the foil. Caleb would have called, because Zara had told him to. “I’ve patched most of your injuries already.”

“Don’ deserve it…” Mrs Reines mumbled, slurring a little. “Tried to keep them safe… Couldn’t. ’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Please don’t talk,” Zara said calmly, but Mrs Reines continued to do just that as Zara finished the patch and started taping it down.

“You…have to…go…” Mrs Reines coughed, and the motion jerked a heart-wrenching cry from her throat.

“No one is going anywhere until the ambulance gets here,” Zara said. Her hands had already started on the last patch, without needing any input from her.

 “… _go_ ,” Mrs Reines said again, more forcefully. “She’ll be…back. Kill you if…she finds you. _Go!”_

Zara’s hands paused. The cool haze parted briefly. “My mother?” she whispered, despite herself.

Mrs Reines suddenly grabbed Zara’s jacket, and Zara almost snarled, only biting back the sound when she saw just how weak Mrs Reines’ fist was. Her usually sepia skin was pale with blood loss. “She will take Caleb,” the woman forced out, through teeth gritted against what had to be unspeakable agony, “if she finds you. Don’t you let her touch my boy, Zara. Don’t you dare.”

The ice shattered as if under a battering ram, and under it there was only _fire_ , enraged and blazing. Zara did not need Mrs Reines to say any more to know that the _she_ referred to was the one who smelled like roses and salt, who had left her stink all over Zara’s territory, who had hurt and taken her father and almost-father. The _she_ that was going to _die_ _screaming_ when Zara got her hands on her.

“I’ll keep him safe.” It was not a promise; it was a statement. “She won’t touch him.”

Caleb’s mom sighed. “You’re a good girl.”

Her fingers slid limply from their grasp on Zara’s jacket, and her eyes fell closed.

She was still breathing as Zara numbly finished the last patch and taped it into place, but she didn’t stir, not even when Zara got up and collected the gun from the counter. Mrs Reines’ breathing was harsh and quick, which could be a sign of a sucking chest wound, but Zara had done all she could; she had to go. Even without Mrs Reines’ warning, Zara would not have been willing to linger; the roses-marzipan-salt woman, the one whose stink was all over the apartment, had taken Nasir and Tariq and almost killed Mrs Reines, and she might come back.

If the Rose really was Zara’s mother, there was a very good chance she would come back and take her daughter as she’d taken her ex-husband.

Without looking back at the woman who’d baked her birthday cake just yesterday, Zara quickly left the kitchen and threw together a go-bag. The same people who’d torn apart her home had wrecked her room, but not so badly that she couldn’t find what she wanted; clothes and toiletries and pepper spray, the knife taped to the back of her headboard and the one hidden in her menstrual supplies. Beneath the false bottom of a drawer she recovered her passport, a roll of emergency cash, and a disposable cell phone. She shoved it all in a bag, changed quickly into fresh clothes, and was looking for the first aid kit in the studio when she heard a noise behind her.

She whirled, bringing the Beretta up two-handed—and froze in complete confusion as the intruder put zir hands in the air.

It was the enby from last night, Ele, and once again zir strange scent jumped out at Zara, impossibly soothing and impossibly strange. It defied definition, and Zara could no more figure out zir gender in the bright light of day than she’d been able to in the dim club the night before; ze was as androgynous physically as ze was scent-wise. Pretty, almost beautiful, actually, with dark messy hair and the same richly coloured skin as Zara’s own. Ze was taller than her, _everyone_ was taller than Zara, but ze couldn’t have been much older; eighteen or nineteen, maybe, early twenties at the very most. In daylight zir eyes were a startling blue, bright as jewels.

“Sorry!” Ele said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Who are you?” Zara demanded. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m the Solsaltare _norea_. My name is Eleleth—you can call me Ele.” Ze frowned at the Beretta. “Do you think you could put the gun away, Syre? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why,” Zara repeated through gritted teeth, “are you here, Ele?”

Ele hesitated. “Well, you didn’t show up at the Haven this morning,” ze said apologetically. “And Satri said that you weren’t manifested yet, even though _Davi_ said you damn well were—sorry, Syre, his words, not mine—anyway, she, Satri, sent me to come find you and escort you to the Haven.”

 _Davi._ Just the thought of her golden boy set a burning hunger alight in her belly, made her insides clench tight. _Mine._ But Zara pushed the desire away, focussing on the more important parts of Ele’s message. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said coldly.

Ele blinked. “But—Syre, you’re in the Solsaltare canton. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to explain to the Solsaltare _lilitare_ what you’re doing here.”

“Look, if you don’t want me in your stupid club then I won’t go back there, all right?” Zara snapped.

“That’s not what I meant.” Ele rolled zir eyes as if pleading for patience from some Heavenly power. “I’m sorry, I’m not doing this right. This canton is Solsaltare territory, Syre. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I live here!”

Ele blinked again, confused. “What?”

“I live here. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m not going to go live in, in _Moscow_ or something just because you say so!”

“Moscow belongs to the Zharptitsas,” Ele said, even more puzzled. “Why would you go there? Are they your kin?”

She didn’t have time for this. “Look, I’m going to say this one more time, because you don’t seem to be getting it: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know you, I’m not listening to you, and I am definitely not going anywhere with you. Now _get out of my way.”_

Ele didn’t move, but the scent of snow and lavender began to fill the room, the same soothing, reassuring aroma that had put Caleb into a drugged serenity last night. Zara fired a warning shot without hesitation.

“Try and drug me, and I will shoot you,” she said coldly.

She expected Ele to scoff, but the enby grew pale. “Syre, please,” ze said, even as ze stepped to one side to let Zara pass. “I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help!” Zara snapped. She kept the gun up and her gaze on Ele, carefully walking past zir. The drug in the air had dissipated; Zara had no idea how Ele had produced it, since she hadn’t seen an aerosol can anywhere, but she was wary of Ele trying to use it again.

When she judged herself at a safe distance, she thumbed on the safety, turned, and fled the apartment.

*

She emerged in the sunlight serenaded by approaching police sirens, made a split-second decision, and didn’t stop. Instead she grabbed Caleb’s wrist as she ran past, pulling him along with her.

He didn’t fight her, didn’t even question her. He just started running.

*

The moment they were out of sight of the house, Zara led Caleb up onto the rooftops, leaping from a dumpster to catch a fire escape and swinging herself up onto the sky-road. She focussed on the rush of feeling her own body’s power and grace, the sweet burn of physical exertion, the thrill of being young and strong and capable of what she wanted. She translated vectors and distances into jumps and rolls, vaults and flips, and thought of nothing but the pound of concrete and metal under her feet and the wind snatching at her hair.

But nobody could run forever, and Zara didn’t try. When she could no longer hear the ambulance sirens, she stopped, and gestured for Caleb to stop too.

He did, and watched her. He still asked no questions, but he didn’t need to speak to tell her he was afraid; the scent rising from his skin was near enough to that which Nasir and Tariq and Mrs Reines had left in Zara’s apartment to sicken her.

“Down,” Zara said finally—in the Alpha Voice, firm and clear and brooking no disobedience whatsoever—and Caleb dropped for her. He went down on his knees there on the rooftop without hesitation, and the curve of his spine was sacred calligraphy, the peace that swept over his face as he knelt at her feet a benison.

Gently, she slid her fingers into his hair and drew him closer until his cheek pressed against her thigh. Even before she touched him, the sour tang of his fear had melted into something sweeter and calmer, and now the scents of coconut and vanilla wafted up to her, a perfume she wished he could always wear.

“Your mom was at my place,” she said quietly. She stroked his hair, over and over, anchoring him here and now and with her. “With my dad and Tariq. Someone attacked them; that’s when dad called and told me not to come home. But we went back anyway, didn’t we?”

Caleb hummed in agreement, almost sleepily. He’d dropped down deep, deeper than she’d meant for him to go, but maybe that was best; it would be easier for him to hear what she had to say through the haze of subspace.

“Dad and Tariq were gone,” she told Caleb. “Your mom was there. She was very badly hurt, but I gave her first-aid. She’s probably going to be in hospital for a while, but I think she’s going to be okay.” The police cars and ambulance had been almost on the doorstep when she and Caleb left, she thought coolly. They would find Mrs Reines very quickly.

The horror of it all still did not touch her. She kept waiting and waiting for it, but it hadn’t yet come.

“Your mom said that she tried to protect my dads, but couldn’t. And that whoever it was would kill me and take you if she found us. That’s why we left.”

Caleb nodded, slowly, against her leg. Zara kept petting him.

“One of those people from Vatican was there. Ele. Did you see zem come in after me?”

This time Caleb shook his head.

Zara considered that. She had not scented Ele in the apartment when she’d entered it, so ze must have come in after her. The brownstone had a back door that led to a small, scrubby garden; maybe Ele had come in that way. She filed it away to think about later; it didn’t seem very important right now.

There were other things she had to think about later.

“Dad said there’s a saved location in my phone that we should go to. So we’re going to head to your house, pack you a bag, and go wherever it is my dad wanted us to go.” It was not a question, or a suggestion. This was what they would do. “We’re going to go very quickly, because it sounds like whoever attacked our parents is looking for us too. Do you understand?”

Caleb nodded again.

Despite everything, Zara found herself smiling. Caleb’s faith in her was more soothing than any drug, as if simply by virtue of believing her to be capable of handling anything, he made her so. His faith in her… It was humbling that he gave her this, that he chose to give her this. Humbling—and empowering. Caleb’s adoration, his _worship_ , worked alchemy as it roared through her veins, transmuting her mortal blood to godly ichor. When he knelt at her feet, he made her into a goddess.

“I love you so much,” she told him softly. “You’re so, so good for me, Cal. God, I’m so proud of you.” He hadn’t faltered once all morning, had trusted her without question, without hesitation. He’d had every right to balk or freak out, but he hadn’t, because she’d needed him not to.

He deserved so much more than he was likely to get today.

She breathed in his blissful pleasure at having pleased, felt it in the way he relaxed against her leg. The scent made her ache as she drew it deep into her lungs, a warm molten heat pooling low in her stomach. She wanted so badly to kiss him breathless. His lips would be soft and slack if she kissed him now, unresisting, too deep in the subspace to even beg…

But there was no time for that. No time, and yet as she coaxed him back to reality she went slowly. She’d long ago learned that taking him out of a drop too quickly left him shaken and sick, uneasy in his skin and mind, sometimes for days, and not even the unrelenting pressure of knowing they needed to be moving was enough to make Zara subject him to that. Instead she kept petting him, making sure she was always touching his hair or his cheek as she kept up a continuous stream of heart-felt praise. At home she would have wrapped him in blankets and cuddled him until he felt solid again, made him sandwiches or pancakes and bullied him into drinking a fruit smoothie. Here she only had what was in her go-bag to work with, but she fed him bits of energy bar and squares of milk chocolate until he blinked up at her with clear eyes.

“You ready to get up?” she asked gently, and he nodded.

She helped him to his feet and hugged him, still murmuring, stroking her palm down his spine over and over. His arms came up around her, and for a long minute they stayed like that. She let him breathe, felt him shift and settle inside himself, felt him cast his anchor between the white arcs of her ribcage.

Where it hooked and caught, as it always had—and always would.

“Good boy,” Zara said again—meaning it, always meaning it. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said quietly.

She pulled away a little to kiss him softly, cupping his face in her hands. “Good. Then let’s go.”

*

They travelled most of the way to Caleb’s house by rooftop. Like Zara’s family, Caleb and his mom lived in an old converted brownstone; unlike Nasir and Tariq, Mrs Reines owned her building, renting out the other five apartments to other families. More than once she had offered to put up Zara’s family in one of those very apartments, rent free. Nasir had always smiled and politely but firmly declined, without explanation; Hana channelled her disappointment by feeding them, bringing baked goods and pot roasts and hearty lasagnes to the Shammas household at least twice a week. Zara had never understood the dynamic between Caleb’s mom and her dads, but she was grateful for the food. Nobody cooked like Mrs Reines.

Zara and Caleb entered through the back of the building, shimmying down a drainpipe and onto one of the flowering balconies that grew out of the back wall. Zara listened for the sound of police sirens as Caleb unlocked the balcony door with his key, but she could hear nothing. Maybe they were just too far away for the sound to carry, but she thought it more likely that the cops had turned the sirens off now that they were at the scene. By now some rookie would be setting up police tape around the bloodstains and broken door, and forensics teams would have been called. Hopefully Caleb’s mom had already been whisked away to the sterile safety of a hospital.

Maybe they should have stayed to talk to the cops, but Zara didn’t think she’d made a mistake there. They didn’t know who was looking for them, didn’t know if the Rose might have eyes in law enforcement. If she did, talking to the police would be like stepping into a spotlight; there would be a paper trail, and because Zara and Caleb were minors without any other relatives to take care of them, they would probably get dumped in a group home for someone else to deal with. They would be sitting ducks. No, better to stay off the radar entirely until they knew what was going on.

It wasn’t as if telling the police what the attackers smelled like would help their investigation any.

Once they were inside the apartment, Zara made Caleb wait while she did a quick sweep, looking—and smelling—for signs that strangers had been here. But there was no blood-scent here, no rose-stink, and nothing was out of place. It seemed that the Rose had either not found or not reached Caleb’s home yet.

She sent Caleb to pack a go-bag while she paced from room to room, watching the windows and listening for a sound at the door. Zara did not often visit Caleb’s home, because his mother’s scent was embedded in the walls. Now she realised that what bothered her about it—made her snappish and short-tempered, as if a smell could itch—was a lesser version of what had made her ready to kill the girl in white the night before. The same _something_ , but weaker, not so intense. Diluted.

Which led her to considering some of the things she’d set aside to think about later. Primarily the particular realisation which she had missed in the chaos last night but that had leapt out at her upon seeing Ele in the light of day, which was: Ele and zir friends looked like Zara and Nasir.

It should have been impossible. Zara had never seen anyone else who looked quite like her—Caleb and his mom came close, but the bones in their faces were subtly different, their skin not quite the right shade. Tariq came closer still, so close he and Nasir might have been cousins instead of lovers—but Tariq was paler than Zara and her dad too, darker than Caleb but not dark enough. Zara had never stopped to think about it; she had accepted her father’s explanation that their family was a hodgepodge mess of ethnicities, and that was why they didn’t fit neatly into any category. This was New York; she didn’t know _anyone_ who defined themselves as more than an American, who didn’t have parents and grandparents and great-grandparents from all over the place. She was hardly the only teenager unable to stick an easy label on their heritage.

But these strangers… The shape of their faces, the shade of their skins, their lithe builds and the liquid grace with which they moved—they were like her. They even _smelled_ like her, like real people—like Zara’s dads and Caleb and, to a lesser extent, his mother.

Like whoever had attacked Mrs Reines and taken Tariq and Nasir.

Zara had known she was different for most of her life. No one else had a sense of smell like hers; Caleb’s research on the topic suggested that humans were physically incapable of smelling the things she could. Other girls had friends who were also girls, because they didn’t have instincts that screamed that all other females were threats to be driven off with violence. Other girls had started menstruating by seventeen. And other (straight) girls might love their boyfriends, but they could appreciate the looks of more than one male, couldn’t they? Whereas no male but Caleb, no matter how objectively handsome, had ever sparked a flicker of sexual interest in Zara; no actor, no supermodel, no hot barista at the local Starbucks. Only Caleb.

And, now, Davi. Gods and goddesses, just _thinking_ about her golden boy made molten gold pool between her legs, hot and liquid. The memory of his scent… She had to swallow hard, remembering, her mouth suddenly dry. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe in the smell of him until it was nested in her lungs. She wanted to kiss him until he couldn’t breathe; she wanted to _bite_ him, bite until his skin gave under her teeth and flooded her mouth with his taste—

With effort, she dragged her thoughts away from fantasy and back to reality.

The point was—the point _was_ , Zara knew full well she wasn’t normal. But she also knew that most people weren’t, when you got right down to it, and so she’d never worried about it much.

But now there were people like her. People who looked like her, moved her like her, smelled like her. More of them had kidnapped her dads and hurt Mrs Reines. Zara wasn’t a freak of nature; she was part of a group. A group that probably included her dad and Tariq and Caleb and Mrs Reines too, because they all looked and smelled varying degrees of right. And some parts of that group were now looking for her and Caleb.

Her dad had known. The guns, the Parkour, the martial arts, the home-schooling—he’d known, and he’d tried to prepare her. 

He’d lied to her, but he’d tried to prepare her.

She thought about that for a little while.

He had also, it seemed, prepared some kind of safe-house or bolt-hole for just this situation. Zara pulled out her phone to look at the address. She almost never used the map application on her phone, because she and Caleb both had an excellent sense of direction, but there was the address, hidden in plain sight amidst the handful of other saved locations: _dry cleaning_. It was an address in East Flatbush, and Zara knew a moment of relief; a part of her had been afraid that she might have had to get herself and Caleb out of the state, maybe even out of the country…

The thought struck her like a lightning bolt: maybe her dads had gotten away. Maybe, when Zara had Caleb reached this place, Nasir and Tariq would be there waiting for them.

 _No_. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe. No, she couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t hope for that. It was so vanishingly unlikely—gods, forget everything else, her dads would never have left Mrs Reines behind if they’d escaped!

 _Unless they had no choice,_ a voice whispered in Zara’s mind.

No. _No_. It might, _might_ be true, but she had to act as though it wasn’t. Otherwise—

Abruptly her thoughts derailed, shuddered to a stop and then snapped down to a single, razor-sharp point. That scent…

In her pacing, she had come closer to Mrs Reines’ room than she ever had before. Normally Zara avoided it, because Mrs Reines’ natural scent, however objectively pleasant, made something in Zara bare its teeth and raise its hackles—and naturally that scent was more concentrated in Mrs’ Reines bedroom than anywhere else in Caleb’s home. It still was, but now that she was standing by the room’s door Zara could smell something else almost hidden beneath it—something sweet and rich and familiar…

Barely aware of what she was doing, Zara opened the door and walked into the room, following the scent.

“I think I’m done, but you might want to—Zara?”

For the first time she could remember, Zara ignored Caleb as she knelt down beside his mother’s bed. Without hesitation she then lay down on her stomach and started pulling out the shoe boxes, books and other junk that had been stashed under the bed, discarding them on the carpet.

“What are you doing?” Caleb asked from behind her. “Zara?”

“Hang on,” she said distractedly. “There’s something…”

She’d wriggled half-under the wrought-iron frame before she found the source of the scent, and then she had to squirm back out before she could examine it. Caleb sat on the edge of the bed, watching curiously.

“I think it’s for you,” Zara said. She found herself holding a plain white box, long but narrow. It might have been a shoebox at one point, the kind meant for knee-high boots. Caleb’s name was written neatly on the lid in his mom’s handwriting, and the whole thing just _exhaled_ that incredible perfume. Zara itched to open it, but instead she gestured Caleb down to sit on the floor next to her and put the box in his lap.

Inside the box was another box—and immediately Zara knew why it had smelled so familiar, because the inner box looked just like the one Nasir had given her yesterday, the elaborately engraved wooden box that had held her new necklace. This one was much larger, resting very snugly inside its shoebox shell, but it was made of the same wood and covered in the same intricate carvings as Zara’s.

And it smelled just the same.

She and Caleb shared a confused glance, and then, at Zara’s nod, Caleb lifted the second lid.

This time they both gasped.

Nestled on a bed of red silk were a pair of honest-to-Kore _vambraces_ , forearm-sleeves of shining metal like something out of Dragon Age. They were shaped like six-winged angels, the sleeves formed out of the curved, sweeping wings, and the angels themselves each clasped what looked like a black opal in their hands, the gems polished smooth and nearly the size of eggs. They were lined with silk and leather, but Zara couldn’t see any clasps or buckles, any way to open them and put them on. They were just solid metal.

“What the…” Caleb whispered, stunned. “Are those _real?”_

“They look brand new.” The vambraces gleamed like polished platinum, with no scratches or dents, and Zara didn’t think anyone put jewels on armour except in fantasy novels. Which meant these weren’t old historical pieces, but made recently, maybe for a movie set or Live Action Role-Playing. But Caleb wasn’t a LARPer, so why would his mom have a pair of these in a box with his name on it? They wouldn’t have made any sense as a gift, however beautiful they were. “Did your mom ever mention these?”

“No. I’d have told you. They’re _gorgeous.”_ Caleb picked them up for a closer look, lifting them out of the box. “They must be worth a fortune…”

Suddenly the metal vambraces rippled like quicksilver. Caleb yelped and tried to drop them, but the wings—the angels’ wings _opened_ , all twelve of them, and _beat_ as if they were going to fly; but they didn’t. Instead they leapt to Caleb’s forearms as if magnetised and snapped tight, the wings wrapping around his arms like platinum ribbons, fluttering and shimmering.

In less time than it took to tell it they were solid again, seamless and beautiful and impossible.

“What the _fuck?”_ Caleb shook his arms, his eyes all whites. “What the—what just—Zara!” He kept shaking his arms, but the vambraces didn’t budge. The exquisitely rendered feathers didn’t so much as twitch. “Get them off me!”

“I don’t think they’re going to come off,” Zara said, recovering from her surprise—at least enough to speak. “Caleb, _hush_ , okay, they’re not hurting you, are they?”

He stopped trying to shake them off, but he stared at them, trembling violently. “N-no…but…”

“They had your name on them,” Zara pointed out reasonably. A little warily, she reached out and brushed her finger along one wing, half-expecting the vambrace to leave Caleb and latch onto her. But it stayed simple, solid metal, not feathery in the least. “Obviously they’re meant for you.”

Caleb looked up and stared at her, wide-eyed. “They—you saw that, right? They moved on their own!”

“Mm.” Zara bent her head closer to examine the closer vambrace. “Maybe it’s some new military thing. Coded to your DNA?”

“Like… Like fingerprint-locked guns?” Caleb asked hesitantly.

“Why not? They’re building invisibility cloaks and prosthetic arms that can feel touch now. This isn’t _that_ much weirder. Just prettier.” She straightened up. The vambraces didn’t _look_ like they had tech in them, but it wasn’t as though Zara was an expert. For all she knew, those opals were just well-disguised computer chips or something. “Better question is: why the hell does your mom have something like this under her bed?”

Caleb shrugged helplessly, but her imperturbation was smoothing away his panic faster than any reassurances could have done. For the final touch Zara curved her hand around the back of his neck, her thumb stroking circles over his pulse, and he shivered and relaxed into it.

She didn’t wonder aloud why the military would want to make vambraces, which were hardly part of modern body armour. She didn’t want Caleb to be afraid of what the things on his arms might be able to do. She hadn’t seen anything that looked like it might fire a bullet or even a laser when she’d looked, but again, it wasn’t as if she knew what to look for. They were just going to have to hope that Caleb didn’t accidentally set them off—or better yet, that there wasn’t anything _to_ set off.

First more people that looked like her and Caleb. Now Nasir and Mrs Reines both having strange objects in almost identical boxes. What were the chances it wasn’t all part of the same mystery?

_What were dad and Mrs. Reines involved in?_

“Go find a long-sleeve shirt,” she said finally. “Or a jacket. We’ll cover them up.”

“Okay…” Obediently, if gingerly, Caleb started to get up—

And they both froze as they heard the front door open.

“Search it all.” A woman’s voice, cool and smooth as ice, glass, stone, reached Zara’s ear. Instinct made Zara draw a breath, scenting through her mouth like a tiger, and some part of her was unsurprised to taste the stench of roses in her throat, faint but already growing stronger. Under and around it, the scents of the same males that had been at Zara’s apartment. “Every inch. I want to know everywhere they could have gone.”

Silently, Zara reached under her jacket. Her pulse thudded strong and steady against the inside of her wrist as heavy, adult footsteps sounded throughout the apartment, and as she drew out the Beretta she thumbed off the safety.

It all fell into place in her mind: there was no way to the roof from this room. The balcony opened onto the apartment’s sitting room, but the front door was closer. Therefore, she had to get herself and Caleb to that door.

Any second now, one of the Rose’s males was going to appear in the doorway. But he would not be expecting a teenage markswoman.

“Stick to me like _glue,”_ she whisper-ordered, and Caleb nodded, going calm, going relaxed, slipping into the easy headspace of obedience like an otter into a river.

Quickly, she touched her fingertips to his cheek, wordless praise—and when a man _(violets, he smelled like violets and ashes and dry, barren earth)_ stepped into the doorway, she shot the stranger in the chest.

She and Caleb were up before he’d even fallen, the tearing _crack_ of the gunshot _(iron-graphite-nitro-glycerine scent like a slap to the brain)_ still bursting through the apartment as they burst through the doorway over the falling corpse. Caleb had his pack and she had hers and there, two adult males, another coming out of Caleb’s bedroom, two from the kitchen, a swirl of sage and birch and tea and clove in her nose and mouth and turning towards her, a tall woman in white leather with a toxic spill of poison-white hair—

_The Rose—_

Her scent burst like a bomb in Zara’s lungs and it all went red and terrible and senseless; she forgot the door, forgot the escape or the gun in her hand; it all washed away under the tsunami of mindless rage that broke upon her shore. Her lips pulled back and she snarled like an animal, seeing only the woman’s dark eyes, knowing only her scent _(roses and salt)_ feeling it beat against her like fists: _foe rival enemy threat-threat-threat!_

Growls and snarls sounded around her, and they were far away, impossibly distant; dimly she heard Caleb snarl back, felt his bag brush hers as he turned back-to-back with her, covering her. Zara felt a stab of pride through the crimson haze.

The woman held up her hand, quieting her males; her eyes were calm, but her hand trembled slightly. She was wearing something out of Skyrim; it was armour, plates of white leather and silvery metal overlapping like dragon scales to form a light, flexible tunic, decorated with golden scrollwork angels at the shoulders, forearms, and waist. Below the tunic were matching white trousers, similarly made up of leather and metal, and snowy combat boots with engraved silver buckles. Even her fingertips were covered by long gloves with metal scales tracing out her tendons, but the lower half of her face was hidden behind a scarf the same colour as the snow-melt hair tumbling down her back, the cloth so soaked in perfume it almost drowned out the woman’s rose-scent. Only her eyes and brow were visible; eyes that were the same rich brown as Zara’s, set in a face the same colour as Zara’s own.

“Zariel,” the woman said. She did not remove the scarf. “I was hoping—”

Zara shot her.

Shot _at_ her, rather; in her hand-shaking fury, the shot went wide and chaos erupted, the Rose’s three-four- _five_ males roaring and attacking all at once, drawing knives and swords of ruby-red crystal—

Zara spun and snatched at Caleb and oh, turning her back on the woman was like tearing her heart out but she did it, did it for Caleb, pulled him close and saw his face twisted, pupils blown black and his fingers curled into useless, vicious claws—

She glimpsed, for an instant, the metal coat-rack by the door twisting like taffy, the mirror on the wall cracking and crunching as its silver frame warped like a Salvador Dali painting, coins left on the table crumpling in on themselves like paper in a fire—

On her finger, the ring Caleb had given her twisted, tightened—

 _“Close your eyes!”_ a familiar voice shouted, and without thinking Zara ducked, pulling Caleb down with her in time to see a dozen smooth pebbles tossed down on the floor around them—

And shut her eyes just as light _detonated_ through the space, blinding even through her eyelids.

Male voices cried out, and Zara breathed in the stink of shock and pain—

She jumped when a hand gripped hers, swung the gun up, but she scented Ele before her eyes were open and didn’t pull the trigger. “Come on!” Ele said urgently, but Zara pulled her hand free and grabbed Caleb’s, first, only then following as Ele ran between the stunned and blinded men, more pebbles clutched in zir hand.

“Stop them!” the woman shouted from behind them. “Stop them— _Zariel!”_

Zara didn’t turn around, didn’t look back, breathed shallow breaths to keep the scent of roses from fogging her brain. She saw Ele take something from zir belt, a little vial of something red, and smash it against the front door frame; caught the smell of blood, coppery and real, right, it smelled like the Rose and Caleb’s mom and most of all like the girl at Vatican but it didn’t bring the fury back. Beside her Caleb made a sound in the back of his throat, confused, shocked, hungry, and then Ele stepped aside, ushering them through, “Go, I’ll follow, _go,”_ and Zara ran through the door without pause, Caleb’s hand tight in hers—

And ran out, not into the corridor of Caleb’s building, but into sunlight and grass, trees and sky and the wind on her face. She ran through the doorway and was suddenly outside, and Caleb was beside her but the apartment was gone, the _building_ was gone, and when Zara spun around to look, she saw no door, no Rose, and no Ele.

They were alone.


	4. Chapter Three: A Name Profaned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter originally had a whole lot of info-dumping that was rubbing me the wrong way. It's fixed now, and the events of the chapter go differently than they did in the first draft. Sorry for the confusion!

“Zara,” Caleb said calmly after a long pause, “I think I’ve been drugged again.”

“Oh, you’re hallucinating too?” Zara said weakly. Carefully, she put the Beretta away with one hand, squeezing Caleb’s hand with the other. “So am I, dearling.”

They were standing high on the slope of a hill softly carpeted in green, a richer green than Zara had ever glimpsed in New York—a green like a gem, like agate. Down below, the base of the hill met and melded into a lake of lapis blue in a sweep of ivory sand, the colour of shore and water both so vibrant as to be unreal, and at the centre of the lake, like a jewel held in cupped hands, was an island, and a city atop it like a crown of pearls and diamonds. It was too far away to make out much detail, but Zara saw domes and towers and clean white buildings, cupolas and spires stretching like swords towards the sky. Dark shapes, too large to be birds, maybe kites or drones, flew back and forth above the rooftops, and there were more shapes on the lake: boats, but nothing like the ferries Zara and Caleb had seen by the New York harbour. These were long and graceful and clearly made of wood, with bright sails like the wings of birds at their masts. Most were gathered by what looked like a harbour, but one enormous barge was making its way to the mouth of the river ribboning away from the lake to Zara’s right.

“Do you—” Caleb swallowed hard, and Zara turned to look him. But his face was turned upwards to the sky. “Do you see that?”

Zara looked up—and didn’t have to ask what he meant.

There was no sun here. The light Zara had thought was sunlight came from a—a—she had no idea what to call it, even within her own mind. A net of light stretched across the sky, like celestial lace laid over azure silk, and Zara had to blink and look down again because it was blinding to look at, left after-images glittering across her vision like staring into the sun. But the memory of it gleamed cold, and only reminding herself that she had to be hallucinating kept her from outright panic.

There was no need to come up with a logical explanation for it. _It wasn’t real_.

 _Then how are you and Caleb seeing the same thing?_ a voice whispered.

 _I don’t know that we are!_ Zara argued.

_Then ask._

“Cal, what exactly are you seeing?”

“In the sky?” When she nodded, he answered, “It’s like a—like something out of a sci-fi story, like there’s hundreds of suns, and someone played join-the-dots with them.”

That was it exactly. _How can we see the same thing?_

“It’s beautiful,” Caleb murmured, and it was, but _how_ —

 _You both saw the wings_ , that inner voice pointed out, merciless. _And that was last night. You’re_ still _sharing visions_.

But mass hallucinations were possible, weren’t they? Surely she’d heard something about that somewhere—

_If this is some kind of dream, where’s the Rose? What’s happening where we can’t see?_

Was the Rose real? Or had Zara never woken up, had this all been one long dream—

“It’s like you’ve never seen Nayatseren before.”

Zara whirled. Ele was standing just above them on the slope, hands in pockets, an amused smile on zir face. For the first time, Zara noticed the long red dagger sheathed at zir belt, starkly obtrusive against denim jeans and a plain blue t-shirt.

Whatever ze saw in her face, it banished zir smile. “You… _have_ been here before, haven’t you?”

“Have I been to the phantasmal city with a thousand suns? No I have not.” Zara glanced up at Caleb. “What about you, Cal, you been here before?”

Caleb shook his head. He’d turned when Zara did, and now his eyes were locked on Ele like a hawk watching a rabbit. Remembering the events of the night before, Zara laid her hand on his chest, pointedly holding him back.

He looked at her, and some of the honed fierceness faded from his eyes.

“Good boy,” she murmured.

“They’re not suns,” Ele said. Ze was frowning, suspicious or confused or maybe both. “They’re the Saharias. The Mothers.” Ze looked from Zara to Caleb and back again. “Which _neashira_ are you from, that you don’t know that?”

“ ‘Neashira?” Zara echoed. “You know what, I don’t care. Give us the antidote to whatever you dosed us with, and we can all pretend this never happened, how’s that?”

“Dosed you—? Syre, I don’t understand.”

Zara gestured to their fantastical surroundings. “None of this is real! Whatever was in that vial you broke is making us see things, isn’t it? So you must have an antidote.” At least, she couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to carry this strong a hallucinogen in a breakable container without also carrying around the remedy—hopefully in a less fragile container.

Ele’s frown deepened. “That wasn’t a drug. It was blood from my _lilitare_.”

Zara stared at zem. “Is that some kind of code?”

Ele hesitated. “I think you need to speak to my _lilitare_ ,” ze said finally. “That’s the only way this is going to get settled.” Ze turned and started walking towards a small copse of trees a few dozen feet away. “If you’d follow me, Syre.”

Zara and Caleb exchanged glances, but there didn’t seem to be another option. Lacing her fingers through Caleb’s, Zara led the way, keeping a wary eye on Ele’s garnet dagger. But the sight that waited for them under the trees distracted her.

It was a tall rectangle of stone, for all the world like the frame of a door—except that there was no door, and no space for hinges to set one in place. Instead the sunlight—or the light of the Saharias, whatever they were—picked out the design of wings and swords and stars decorating the stone, an inlay of mother-of-pearl that shone against the pale frame.

“What is this?” Zara asked.

Ele shrugged without looking at her. “Just a door.” Seemingly from the ether, ze produced another glass vial, full of what was apparently the same red liquid— _wait, did ze mean_ actual _blood?_ —as what ze’d used at Simon’s apartment.

“Are you going to break that again?” Caleb asked.

Ele gave him an odd look. “Not now I don’t have to rush.” Ze poured a few drops of the blood on zir fingers and dabbed it on the stone, capping the vial and vanishing it again as the blood drops trailed crimson threads like bloody tear tracks on the door frame.

“There,” ze said after a pause. “You and your _aatam_ can go through, Syre.”

Zara tightened her grip on Caleb’s hand, but did not hesitate: when Ele stepped aside, she stepped through, pulling Caleb with her, sure that nothing would happen but not seeing any other choice than to play along.

But her foot did not come down on the grass of that strange hill, and when she came through the blood-born door it was not with the branches of trees above her head. Without transition, she was simply, suddenly, elsewhere.

Her foot came down, and she stopped.

_This is not my territory._

The room in which she and Caleb found themselves was furnished in cream and gold and crimson. Four low couches were set around a beautiful indoor pool, where fish glimmered in the water like bright coins; its rim, and the rest of the floor, was tiled in an intricate mosaic of dark-skinned women surrounded by shining lights. A windchime of silver and glass hung by the open windows, letting familiarly humid air into the room; sticks of incense burned in every corner, but not enough to disguise the scent of the city outside. At a guess, they were back in New York again, although in all fairness, she’d never had another city to compare it to.

 _And not that we ever actually left,_ she reminded herself. They’d been drugged, not transported.

 _And how exactly did ze give you the antidote?_ a voice asked sarcastically.

She pushed the thought away to consider later.

More importantly, every inch of the room was imbued with another woman’s scent—one Zara recognised instantly from the club last night. If the girl from Vatican didn’t live here, then she spent almost all of her time in this building, and the hair on the back of Zara’s neck rose as if electrocuted. As illogical as it was, this, more than anything else that had happened today, made her uneasy.

_I’m trespassing._

Ele stepped into view from behind her. “If you’d follow me, Syre?”

Zara nodded shortly, gesturing for Ele to walk in front of them, where Zara could keep an eye on zem. She stroked her fingers over the back of Caleb’s hand, then let it go, just in case she ended up needing her hands free.

Thinking of preparing for a fight made her realise something: she was thinking clearly. Despite the other girl’s scent hanging on the air, embedded into the walls and furnishings, Zara hadn’t turned into a roaring green rage-monster.

 _What’s different now?_ She eyed the incense suspiciously, wondering if it was drugged, too.

As Ele led them through a beautiful corridor—mosaicked in tiny mirrored squares, interspersed with jewel-like stained glass in abstract patterns—Zara counted the scents of another five or six people living in the building, not just the girl in white _(lilies_ , Zara thought, now that she was rational enough to analyse the girl’s scent, _lilies and hot sand and copper)_. Ele probably lived here too, and more males like Davi—and Davi himself. His scent was everywhere, a siren-call that wove its way deep into her lungs, into her blood to be carried to every inch of her body; a slow-burning ache woke between her thighs as she inhaled the smell of him greedily, unable to help herself.

Beside her, Caleb made a low sound in his throat, and Ele glanced back at her with wide eyes. “Syre?” ze asked hesitantly.

Zara ran her tongue over her incisors. They ached sharply, an almost sweet pain that only heightened this ridiculous desire: she could feel herself growing wet, just from her lion-boy’s scent. “Yes?” She was going to have to ask why Ele kept calling her that soon.

Ele dropped zir eyes. “Nothing. Your pardon.”

Zara and Caleb exchanged another look. His eyes were dark, a hungry note rising from his skin, and Zara’s teeth throbbed in time with her sex.

It was a large building—a house?—and they passed five arched doorways before Ele brought them to their destination, a richly appointed sitting room decorated in an Arabic style. Again, there were low sofas and chairs, barely raised above the floor, and again the air was perfumed, this time from an oil-burner set on the low table of dark wood between the couches. The round fireplace was unlit, in deference to the late summer heat, but the richly red walls, the colour of fire glimpsed through red wine, made the room seem warmer than it was.

“You can leave your shoes here,” Ele said, showing them a shoe-rack of nearly black wood tucked beside the doorway. “Please make yourself comfortable. I’ll send someone to bring you water in just a moment.” Ze disappeared back into the hallway before they could ask any questions.

Caleb looked down at his feet. “Should we…?”

Zara considered. If they had to run, it would be better if they had their shoes. On the other hand, whatever was going on, it would probably go better if they were polite to their…hosts. “Yes,” she decided. “But keep your bag close by. Just in case.”

Shoeless, she settled herself on one of the sofas, her bag within reach. When he was ready to sit down too, Caleb looked at her and hesitated.

She understood at once. “Now’s not a good time, dearling,” she said softly, regretfully. 

He nodded, and when she patted the couch came to sit next to her instead of curling up by her feet.

She ran her fingers through his hair, taking some of his tension away with the gesture, but not enough. She hardly had to look at him to know he needed more than this, but she couldn’t give it to him here, now, in unfamiliar and possibly unsafe surroundings. The second she could, she promised herself, she would give him everything he needed. But not yet.

She was examining the oil burner—it was shaped like three angels, the bowl of oil cradled in their wings—when she heard someone approaching a few minutes later. Caleb sat bolt upright, his gaze locking onto the doorway just before a young man came into view, carefully holding a large wooden bowl in his hands.

And. _Woah_. Still feeling the effects of Davi’s scent, Zara’s lizard-brain sat up and paid attention as the water-bearer—seventeen, eighteen?—entered and set his bowl on the table in front of her. She barely noticed the gilt on the bowl, the design of flames and suns carved into the wood, or the flax flowers floating on the clear water inside it, aware of nothing but the male’s amazing _scent_. Her lips parted automatically, breathing it in through her mouth; frangipani and sugar and musk, simultaneously sweet and sinful, utterly mouth-watering. As if that wasn’t enough, he was _gorgeous_ , almost photoshopped-pretty; slender almost to the point of delicacy, with gold beads and red thread braided into the black hair that tumbled down his shoulders. She knew his skin was like burnished sandalwood because there was a whole lot of it on display; he was shirtless, wearing only a pair of red sirwal trousers, the kind Zara had seen white kids call harem pants, loose and soft-looking, intimately touchable. His eyes were downcast with a modesty that made Zara want to bite him just to hear the sound he’d make; when he straightened from setting the bowl down she glimpsed a row of gold earrings running down the rim of his ear, bright and teasing.

And then he knelt, smooth as new cream, at her feet.

“Syre.” He looked up at her through perfect eyelashes. “Is there aught else I might do for you?”

Without conscious thought, Zara’s eyebrows rose. _Not so modest after all_ , she thought, amused and a little intrigued by the flirtatious glint in mahogany-dark eyes.

But even before Caleb growled, low and near-snarling beside her, she was wary. How did these people know she was a domme, a dominatrix who liked her males to kneel? And since normal guys didn’t drop to the floor for a pretty girl, what were the chances this was an attempt to manipulate her?

But Caleb did growl, and Zara cared a lot more about him than some pretty-boy trying to tempt her; pointedly, she looked away from the male on the floor and focussed on the one that was hers. “Cal?” She laid her palm flat on his chest, splaying her fingers to calm him, still him. She remembered the way he’d lunged at Davi all too well; was this the same thing over again?

But where could this half-naked boy possibly be hiding any kind of aerosol drug?

Caleb was watching the other male with all the focus of a sniper, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

_“Caleb.”_

“Xin.”

The new voice broke the stand-off; all three of them looked towards the doorway, and Zara’s shock hissed through her teeth, knowing who it was before she turned her head, recognising the voice by the perfume that accompanied it, the way it seared down her spine and set her blood on fire. And so she was the only one unsurprised to see Davi leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and staring at the boy on the floor. Despite their similar colouring, they couldn’t have been more different; Davi’s hair, if just as long as the other’s—Xin’s?—was tied back in a plain ponytail, without beads, and between his jeans and the turtleneck shirt that hid his throat up to his chin—both deep, unyielding black—he showed no more skin than absolutely necessary. They were both slender, but Davi had a swimmer’s build, lean and gracefully muscled; Zara remembered the red knife he’d carried last night and knew, instinctively, that he knew how to use it.

For all Xin’s deliberate temptation, next to him Davi burned like a sun beside a candleflame.

 _Mine!_ cried Zara’s every cell, but he didn’t even look at her; he had eyes only for Xin. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Xin drew himself up; Zara hadn’t even noticed how he had curved towards her until he stopped. “I’m attending to our guests,” he said stiffly.

Davi bared white teeth. “Get out.”

“Satri—”

“Satrinah,” Davi crooned, his voice gone soft and dangerous, “would never let a slut like you near another _lilit_. _Get out.”_

Xin hissed, cat-like. “How dare—”

It was like stepping through the blooded doors, a sudden shift in the world without any transition: one moment Davi was at the doorway, and in the next he was across the room and had his hand around Xin’s throat, slamming him onto the floor.

Caleb jumped; Zara hissed her surprise. Davi ignored both of them.

“Don’t make me say it again,” he snarled, his white teeth bare inches from Xin’s face. _“Go.”_

When Davi released him, Xin scrambled upright, outrage scribed calligraphic across his face. But he smelled like fear, and he quickly moved around the other male and made for the doorway.

Once there, however, he paused and glanced back, deliberately posed. “If you wanted her,” he said archly, “all you had to do was say so.”

Davi _snarled_ , lion-loud, louder than could possibly come from a human throat. Xin went pale, and was gone before Davi could spring for his throat.

Which. Zara was pretty sure her lion-boy would have done, had he the chance.

Her mouth dry, she looked away from Davi, taking shallow breaths to try and minimise her intake of his scent. It had to be illegal to smell that good: hells, maybe it _was_. Maybe Davi’s scent was fake, some kind of pheromone-laden cologne, a laboratory-forged aphrodisiac. How else could she explain the hot, lush throbbing between her legs, her absolutely _soaked_ underwear? She didn’t even know him, and yet every part of her body screamed that he was as much hers as Caleb—blood and bone, heart and soul.

_Mine!_

Except that he wasn’t. Couldn’t be. It had to be yet another drug. Why not? Clearly these people used drugs for anything and everything. Why not an air-borne aphrodisiac, something to make her hungry and stupid for a guy she didn’t even know?

These people were trying to manipulate her. Xin’s coquettish flirting, Davi’s maddening scent; they were trying to influence her, manipulate her, control her.

_But for gods’ sake, **why**?_

Still, because Davi was still ignoring her and it was driving her to distraction, drugs or no drugs, Zara let her hand fall from Caleb’s chest to his arm. “So which one do you like most, darling?”

Catching on instantly, Caleb’s lips curled up as he leaned back against the couch. “Can we have both?” he asked playfully, watching Davi with eyes too intent for his tone. “They’re both so _pretty.”_

Davi’s head whipped around to stare at them, wide-eyed. Caleb grinned, unabashed; Zara had to suppress a smirk.

“I don’t know,” she said musingly, turning to look at Davi full on. He was frozen, all his brash fury drained away like snowmelt; he was watching her as a mouse watched a cat, and Zara almost purred. “This one doesn’t have many manners.” Her voice cooled. “I don’t like slut-shamers.”

Davi flinched.

Caleb hummed. Something possessive and molten seemed to move through him as he shifted on the sofa, pressing closer to her, pressing his lips to her ear as her hand moved to stroke his spine.

“But you could teach him better,” he breathed, loud enough for the other male to hear, and Zara had her eyes on him still, saw the moment break like a wave across Davi’s face—shaken and shattering, a terrible, burning craving—

And then it was gone, swept away. He swallowed hard—she saw his throat bob beneath his turtleneck—and he said, stiffly, hoarsely, “The _lilitare_ will be with you shortly, Syre.”

Zara and Caleb watched him turn on his heel and walk from the room like a man wounded.

“What was that?” Zara murmured when he was gone. She trailed her fingers through Caleb’s hair. “I didn’t know you had an exhibitionist streak.”

He nuzzled her neck. She shivered. “I didn’t either,” he said, low, rough. “But they really _were_ pretty.”

“Weren’t they?” She resisted the urge to push him down between her legs, trying not to imagine how good it would feel to have his mouth on her _right now_. _For gods’ sake, get a grip, Shammas!_ she told herself, disgusted. _What you’re feeling isn’t real._

But gods, it felt real enough…

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Zara tried to put all thoughts of Caleb’s clever fingers and Davi’s terrible hunger from her mind as Ele returned, following behind the young woman from Vatican.

Zara stiffened, but the wave of irrational fury she’d expected didn’t break. The other woman’s scent filled the room in moments—lilies, hot sand, copper—but it wasn’t enraging, maddening. Just a little itchy, like a bug bite; easy enough to ignore, for which Zara was grateful. _If they’re using some kind of drugged perfumes, maybe she didn’t put hers on today_ , she theorised.

Ele had changed from the jeans ze’d been wearing into a floor-brushing tunic-coat of sea-green, open over an equally long under-tunic of deep sapphire. Silver rings flashed like stars on zir thumbs, and someone had run a brush through zir hair and deftly plaited it, so that it hung in a braid down zir back. In contrast, the woman’s hair hung loose, a thick waterfall of ink that reached almost to her waist, black as night against her rich green tunic. Hers was much shorter than Ele’s, ending at her hips, and where Ele’s was plain thick amber embroidery banded her cuffs, hem, and neck, open at the hollow of her throat and rising into a high collar at the sides and back of her neck. Below the tunic she wore a pair of black cotton trousers, and gold bangles at her wrists and left ankle. A golden cord was tied loosely around her waist, tiny charms dangling where the tassels ought to be.

There was no question, as there was with Ele, that this person was a woman, at least biologically. A few inches taller than Zara and perhaps a few years older, she had a finely drawn, strong face, her eyes honey-brown against cinnamon-coloured skin, her mouth a perfect bow. Like Zara, she was built lean rather than curved, and beneath her loose sleeves were hard, powerful arms. She was beautiful, but there was nothing soft about her.

Ele gave Zara a small bow, then indicated zir companion. “Syre, this is Suzerain Satrinah, _lilitare_ of the Solsaltare Aieon-Na and this canton.”

Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Zara dipped her head politely. “Pleased to meet you.” Still curled into her side, Caleb watched the proceedings carefully.

Suzerain stared at her. Ele coughed, clearly embarrassed. “Syre, you’re meant to give your name and lineage.”

Zara nodded slowly. “Well, that’s going to be a problem,” she said apologetically. “Because I’d like to know why you want it before I give it to you.”

“You’re an undeclared _lilit_ in my canton,” Suzerain—no, Ele and Xin had both called her Satri, Suzerain must be a title—Satrinah said, speaking for the first time. “You have no permission to be here, and yet, here you are. I want your name so I can give it to the Zohar Ariel when she asks about the challenger I destroyed.”

_Destroyed?_

Carefully, Zara said, “As I told Ele earlier, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no idea what a _lilit_ or canton is. It sounds like you think I’m trespassing somehow, but I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I’m only here because Ele brought me.”

“Eleleth escorted you here because I sent vir after you,” Satrinah snapped. “Ve told you, from me, to meet us here this morning. You didn’t come.”

Vir, and ve. In the back of her mind, Zara made a note of Ele’s pronouns. “Because you’re strangers who attacked and drugged my boyfriend and I,” she parried. “Not to mention I have no idea where ‘here’ is.”

“The canton Haven,” Ele answered, shooting a look full of meaning towards Satrinah. “In Flatbush.”

Caleb froze as lights went off in Zara’s mind, both of them understanding the significance at once. “East Flatbush?” She reeled off the address Nasir had hidden in her phone.

“Of course,” Satrinah said, in a tone that said only courtesy was keeping her from rolling eyes. “The same place it’s been since 1896.”

That couldn’t be a coincidence. The address Zara’s dad had told her to run to, and these strangers not only took her there, but from the scents embedded in the building, _lived_ here.

“What?” Satrinah asked, her eyes sharpening as she glanced between Caleb and Zara.

“My dad told me to come here,” Zara said after a pause, struggling to make sense of the thoughts and emotions whirlwinding through her. “He said—” She thought back over his final words. “He said to tell you that my name is…” She sounded out the unfamiliar word carefully, “Celesistar…and—”

She never got the rest out. The moment Zara mentioned the strange name Ele recoiled and Satrinah _hissed_ , a sound so wholly serpentine Zara couldn’t believe it had come from a human throat. _“Celesistar!”_ Satrinah spat, hatred washing across her knife-sharp features like a tide of silt. “How _dare_ you show your face here! And carrying that profaned name with you, like a badge of honour—!”

“Woah, hang on a sec,” Zara said sharply, sitting up straighter; she raised her hands in surrender, extremely conscious of the weight of her Beretta in her jacket. “I have no idea what you’re on about, okay? I’m just saying what my dad told me to say, I don’t know what it means.” _He wouldn’t tell me to say something that would get us killed, right? RIGHT?_

“A likely story,” Satrinah snapped. She stepped forward, placing Ele squarely behind her. “Your _zither_ whelped you in the human world, did she? And sent you here now to spin a tale for the Solsaltare orphan? Did you think my grief would make me a _fool?”_ Her voice rose to a roar. _“It does not!”_

Caleb snarled, and Satrinah’s attention whipped to him; her eyes threw sparks, and then she was on him, across the room in a time-skipped instant and a hand fisted in Caleb’s hair, wrenching him up onto his knees on the couch and his head arched painfully back, and she put her mouth on his and _breathed_ —

Lilies, and hot sand, and copper—

 _“What the fuck are you doing?”_ Zara shouted as Caleb went limp in the other woman’s grasp—limp, and boneless, Zara saw his eyes roll back to the whites and her skull exploded, the sound that came out of her not a scream but an aural supernova and Satrinah let him go just as Zara hurled herself at the other woman’s torso—

Caleb slid sideways as if unconscious, and the whole world turned to gold.

Satrinah fought back. They hit the floor together and Zara went for her eyes, snarling, her wings a storm of golden scythes—but there were sheets of fiery crimson in the way, parrying her, four razored wings like waterfalls of blood and Satrinah’s elbow slammed into Zara’s neck, her knees striking like hammer-blows but the pain couldn’t get a hold on Zara’s rage, the sheer fury that this _roadkill_ had laid hands on her Caleb, drugged him, _hurt him_ ; the edges of their wings cut through floor and walls and furniture as they grappled but Zara hardly noticed, _lilies hot sand copper_ beating in her head like a heart, scorching her lungs, the two of them flipping over and over punching-biting-driving, elbows and the edges of palms, knees and feet and fists—

Satinah was on top of her and Zara grabbed a fistful of her stupid hair and flung her off, hurling her like a toy; she didn’t even cry out, just landed in a flawless roll and jack-knifed into a crouch, her hair a toxic cloud around her body. She launched to her feet and their wings clashed like lightning bolts gone to war, red-gold-red-gold-red, the air screaming as the sharp primary feather-swords cut it to ribbons but they couldn’t cut each other, wing-on-wing rang like struck crystal and singing metal but did not pass through, did not slice, did not _wound_ —

But only for so long as Zara’s two wings could parry Satrinah’s four—

Which would not be for long, these golden energy-limbs might move on will and thought instead of flesh and bone but they took _something_ , a cold ache was spreading like frost behind Zara’s breastbone and her limbs shaking with something like exhaustion and Satrinah was a crimson hailstorm, her wings hammering down at Zara again and again and again without pause until Zara couldn’t attack anymore, had to pull her pinions about her like a shield, a bubble of stained glass and this was it, she was going to die, any minute her wings would shatter into sparks and gold dust and those ruby guillotines would cut her in half, and there would be no one to help her dad and Tariq, Caleb would be abandoned at the mercy of these terrors alone—

Seventeen years of her dads’ unquestionable love, smiles and laughter and algebra and marksmanship, bedtime stories and Marvel movies and Parkour and an unwavering belief in her, they’d known this was coming, they’d prepared her, they would not have sent her here to her death and if they’d made a mistake she still had to find them, she was stronger than this, better than this, _she was her fathers’ daughter and she would not die here_ —

Almost as many years with Caleb, friendship that had stepped sideways into romance and turned into something rich and dark and vital, this boy who loved her, trusted her, had put the whole of himself into her hands and folded her fingers around the gift of himself and she had accepted it, she would not abandon him now, hers to love and protect and she would not leave him alone, _she was Caleb’s domina and she would not die here_ —

She heard again the panic in her father’s voice, saw the blood in her home, smelled the stench of the Rose, saw Caleb’s mother torn apart on the kitchen floor and Caleb’s terrifying reaction to whatever drug Satrinah had used on him, that nauseatingly boneless collapse—

And the cold in her chest gave way to fire.

She slammed her wings open wide and _roared_ as it rushed out of her, power bursting forth like a star being born in a wordless howl of _defiance-refusal-I WILL NOT ABANDON THEM_

_I WILL NOT_

**_I WILL NOT!_ **

There was no streak of flame, no burst of light, nothing tangible or perceivable—but Satrinah’s wings vanished like snuffed fires and she was flung back as if hit by a train, crashing over the table with its angelic oil-burner. It broke under her, and the scent of the oil was almost stronger than that of the women’s berserker rages.

Zara did not pause, did not stop to wonder how-why-what; she spun on her heel, sick and dizzy and indifferent to it. Ele was shouting, calling orders as ze ran to Satrinah and there were footsteps in the corridor as Zara reached Caleb, _wake up wake up please let him be awake—_

He was, just—his skin was warm and his eyes were glazed and she’d never known him to smell like this, even whatever Ele had done at Vatican last night had not xanaxed Caleb so completely, and the need to get him away to safety was a burning coal in Zara’s stomach. “Come on, dearling, come on, we have to go,” she said urgently, coaxing him upright, she could not carry him but he came obediently to his feet, swaying less than she was and that would have to do, they had to go, had to go now now _now!_ “Run with me, Cal, _run!”_

Her wings were gone and the world kept threatening to spin as she pulled Caleb out of the room, barely pausing to grab their bags, she abandoned their shoes because there wasn’t _time_ , gods’ damn it, voices shouting and so many scents, too many, males like those who’d accompanied the Rose, males like poor drugged Caleb and Zara’s stomach heaved, her body protesting their flight and the building was a maze, where was the door, there had to be a front door, _where was the door_ —

Caleb stumbled, and when Zara had helped him up—he was so unresponsive, obeyed her words but didn’t seem able to speak, could only smile weakly, his pupils huge black holes in his eyes—there were four of them, four young men like Davi and Xin but neither of those, four strangers in her way with blades of red crystal and wariness in their eyes and she snarled as much in desperation as fury, flinging out her hand, _“Get out of my way!”_

It happened again, the surge, the _give_ , pouring out of her like a river and this time she screamed with the pain of it, as whatever it was stabbed vicious claws into empty reserves. The four males dropped to the ground, dropped to their knees with stunned, disbelieving expressions but Zara fell with them, let go of Caleb’s hand to clutch her chest at the agony there, the bleeding hollow space where something integral was supposed to be, had always been until this moment—

Distantly, she heard Ele shout something—it sounded like _“Get down!”_ —and the world flashed violent, and then black.


End file.
